Appeal No. 95-3017
Application 07/952,061
§ 112. At the outset, we note that the breadth of the claims is
not equated with indefiniteness of the claims. See In re Miller,
441 F.2d 689, 693, 169 USPQ 597, 600 (CCPA 1971). It is
perfectly permissible for appellant to claim his invention in
terms as broad as his application disclosure will support.
It appears that the examiner’s basic position is that the
word “relatively” and the word “approximately” as appropriate
modifiers render indefinite the respective phrases questioned
by the examiner. The respective phrases in their entirety as
questioned by the examiner are, in our view, set forth with a
reasonable degree of precision and particularly when read in
light of the disclosure and the teachings of the prior art as
they would be by an artisan. Each of the questioned phrases
mirrors the manner in which the respective ranges or relative
uniformity are set forth in the specification as filed. We do
not perceive that the phrases as a whole would deceive the
artisan as to discerning what is or what is not encompassed by
the claimed invention. The art as a whole does not, in our view,
exact the preciseness of a mathematical definition of uniformity
as urged by the examiner. Our understanding of the art is such
that the art tolerates some limited sense of relativeness of
ranges or terms because of manufacturing tolerances anyway. The
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