Appeal No. 2000-0182 Page 14
Application No. 08/831,327
Indeed, the fundamental purpose of a patent claim is to
define the scope of protection5 and hence what the claim
precludes others from doing. All things considered, because a
patentee has the right to exclude others from making, using and
selling the invention covered by a United States letters patent,
the public must be apprised of what the patent covers, so that
those who approach the area circumscribed by the claims of a
patent may more readily and accurately determine the boundaries
of protection in evaluating the possibility of infringement and
dominance. See In re Hammack, 427 F.2d 1378, 1382, 166 USPQ 204,
208 (CCPA 1970).
In the present case, we have reviewed the appellants'
disclosure to help us determine the meaning of the above-noted
terminology from claim 1 and as noted previously have found no
support therefore. Thus, the disclosure does not provide
explicit guidelines defining the term "substantially" as used in
the terminology "increasing substantially monotonically " (claim
1). Furthermore, it is our view that there are no guidelines
that would be implicit to one skilled in the art defining the
5 See In re Vamco Machine & Tool, Inc., 752 F.2d 1564, 224
USPQ 617 (Fed. Cir. 1985).
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