Appeal No. 1999-2544 Page 6
Application No. 08/796,513
by the examiner. A degree of reasonableness is necessary. As
the court stated in In re Moore, 439 F.2d 1232, 1235, 169 USPQ
236, 238 (CCPA 1971), the determination of whether the claims
of an application satisfy the requirements of the second
paragraph of Section 112 is
merely to determine whether the claims do, in fact,
set out and circumscribe a particular area with a
reasonable degree of precision and particularity.
It is here where the definiteness of language
employed must be analyzed -- not in a vacuum, but
always in light of the teachings of the prior art
and of the particular application disclosure as it
would be interpreted by one possessing the ordinary
level of skill in the pertinent art. [Emphasis ours;
footnote omitted.]
Here, the examiner criticizes the use of the claim 1
terminology “for electrical heating,” but we do not believe it
can seriously be contended that the artisan would not
understand that “for electrical heating” refers to the
embodiments disclosed by the appellant's specification wherein
it is described that each hollow fiber of the bundle is
"directly heated electrically" and that "resistor wires are
wound around the hollow fibers... or they are printed on or
applied as strips or films,... with a metal used as a resistor
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