Appeal No. 95-3273
Application 08/136,856
it is a film and can be built into the head liner of a helmet,
hat or sweat band" (Spec. at 8, lines 10-12), which suggests that
the substrate is flexible enough to be bent to conform to the
curve of a head liner, which would appear to be curved at least
as much as the boat hull shown in Geil's Figure 8. Furthermore,
the invention is described as an improvement over prior art
piezoelectric microphones which employ a piezoelectric film
membrane stretched tight between two or more stretching points to
form a vibrating piezoelectric diaphragm (Spec. at 2, lines 7-
12). More particularly, the specification explains that
[b]ecause there is no necessity of a vibrating
diaphragm with the present invention, the PVDF sandwich
element is preferably firmly affixed to a firm, flat,
substantially non-vibrating substrate to form a mounted
PVDF sandwich element. [Emphasis added.] [Spec. at 3,
line 17.]
Consequently, we believe the artisan would have understood the
term "substantially inflexible" as used in claim 1 (and claims 10
and 11) to mean substantially incapable of vibrating in the
manner of a diaphragm. This conclusion is also consistent with
appellant's description of his invention as operating in only a
compression mode (Brief at 3):
Applicant has found that he can use the much smaller
signal which results from mere compression of the
sandwich to produce a signal which is at least as good
as and possibly better than those produced from flexing
the sandwich in a diaphragm, because in the compression
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