Appeal No. 2005-2186
Application No. 09/750,664
In the present case, the examiner has failed to advance any
specific reasons or examples, and none are evident, to support
the broad criticism that the appealed claims are narrative and
replete with grammatical and idiomatic errors and fail to conform
with current USPTO practice. Although the claims arguably might
have been written in a form more acceptable to the examiner, this
possibility, in and of itself, does not mean that the claims as
currently constituted lack a reasonable degree of precision and
particularity.1
As for the alleged double inclusion, the mere fact that
the “liquid holder” and “field applier” recited in the claims as
separate elements might, as disclosed, share a common component,
i.e., conductive nozzle plate 3, does not mean that the claims
effectively require two such elements. One of ordinary skill in
the art, reading the claims in light of the disclosure, clearly
would understand this not to be the case. Properly construed,
the claims do not involve any sort of double inclusion.
1
1 At the oral hearing, the appellants’ counsel, Mr. Ward, confirmed that
the words --to be–– should appear before both occurrences of the word
“sprayed” in claim 1 for consistency with the underlying disclosure. In the
event of further prosecution, appropriate steps should be taken to implement
these changes.
4
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