Appeal No. 97-0904
Application 08/105,699
The test for anticipation is whether:
a single prior art reference discloses, expressly or
under principles of inherency, each and every element
of a claimed invention.
In re RCA Corp. v Applied Digital Data Systems, Inc., 730 F.2d
1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir.), cert. dismissed, 468
U.S. 1228 (1984). As noted above, Kennedy discloses expressly or
under the principles of inherency each and every element of claim
45, and the rejection of claim 45 is hereby sustained.
Pursuant to 37 CFR 1.196(b), we make the following new
rejection: claim 46 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, as being indefinite for failing to particularly point
out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the appellant
regards as the invention, in that the meaning of the claim
limitation of “maintaining the apertured means in a predetermined
spacial relationship” is not clear. It is unclear whether the
apertured means is to be maintained in a predetermined spacial
relationship with another apertured means or with some other
component of the claimed invention.
In view of this situation, it is our opinion that no
definite meaning can be ascribed to the limitation of
“maintaining the apertured means in a predetermined spacial
relationship” in claim 46. When this is true of the terms in a
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