Appeal No. 2003-1876
Application No. 09/209,044
OPINION
We reverse. We will limit our discussion to claim 1 which is the sole independent
claim.
The review of the Examiner’s rejection of the appealed claims necessarily entails
the interpretation of the scope of the appealed claims, giving the broadest reasonable
interpretation to the terms thereof consistent with the written description provided in
Appellants’ specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art.
See In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997). Thus,
the terms in the appealed claims must be given their ordinary meaning unless another
meaning is intended by appellants as established in the written description of their
specification. See, e.g., Morris, supra; In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d
1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989).
Applying these principles, we note that appealed claim 1 is directed to a three
dimensional material comprising a microfiber web. The material is described as having a
fiber orientation factor (ff(R)) of less than 0.87; a surface area to void volume (SA/VV) of
less than 186 cm2/cm3; and a caliper of less than 0.150 inches. Claim 1 also specifies that
the average pore size for a first volume encompassing a top surface is not the same as an
average pore size for a second volume encompassing a lower surface. To reject the
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