Appeal 2006-2523
Application 10/206,496
1553, 1555, 35 USPQ2d 1801, 1802 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (“The claimed
composition is defined as comprising - meaning containing at least - five
specific ingredients.”); In re Baxter, 656 F.2d 679, 686-87, 210 USPQ 795,
802-03 (CCPA 1981) (“As long as one of the monomers in the reaction is
propylene, any other monomer may be present, because the term ‘comprises’
permits the inclusion of other steps, elements, or materials.”).
Independent claim 6 specifies essentially the same steps as claim 1
with the differences the metallic precursor is a metal oxo-hydroxide, the
substrate particles are any manner of finely divided metal substrate particles
which are suspended in an initial reaction solution comprising at least any
manner of “alcohol,” and the “total alcohol content . . . comprises between
about 40% to about 90% of the reaction solution by volume.” Dependent
claim 7 modifies the method of claim 6 by specifying “the alcohol in the
initial reaction solution is selected from the group consisting of alcohols
having from 2 to 7 carbon atoms.”
Dependent claim 11 modifies the method of claim 6 by specifying that
“the step of adding metal substrate particles includes adding particles
selected from the group consisting of” specified metals, the surface
characteristics of which are not specified. The term “includes” further opens
the method of claim 6 to contain any amount of other metal particles in
addition to the members of the specified Markush group. See generally,
Baxter, 656 F.2d at 686-87, 210 USPQ at 802-03; see also In re Bertsch, 132
F.2d 1014, 1019, 56 USPQ 379, 384 (CCPA 1942) (“it is true that the word
‘comprising’ is usually in patent law held to be synonymous with the word
6
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