Appeal No. 2005-0537
Application No. 08/925,985 Page 8
4, appellants maintain that the “pure aluminum” language at issue
is not indefinite for similar reasons.
We are not persuaded by those arguments and inconsistent
dictionary definitions furnished by appellants. Indeed, rather
than clarifying the ambiguous claim language at issue,
appellants’ arguments and cited dictionary definition(s) serve to
highlight the indistinctness of the terms “pure” and
“substantially pure” as used in the rejected claims. Concerning
this matter, we note that the term “purity, chemical” is
described in the ninth edition of The Condensed Chemical
Dictionary by referring to previously recognized purity standards
or grades, specifications for which have been established by a
recognized standard setting organization.4 Here, as noted above,
appellants have not established that the term “pure” as used in
the claims before us denotes a particular industry recognized
grade of purity. This is especially the case for representative
claims 1 and 25 because it is not clear what industry standard
could possibly exist for the term “metallic” that follows “pure”
in those claims. In this regard, any material that contains some
4
4 See the definitions of “grade” and “purity, chemical” in
The Condensed Chemical Dictionary, Coauthored and Co-edited by
Gessner G. Hawley (Ninth Ed. (1977), pp. 421 and 732.
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