Appeal No. 97-2600
Application 08/500,091
(Fed. Cir. 1991) and In re Barker, 559 F.2d 588, 591, 194 USPQ
470, 472 (CCPA 1977), cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1064 (1978). As
the court stated in Vas-Cath, 935 F.2d at 1563-64, 19 USPQ2d
at 1117:
35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, requires
a "written description of the invention"
which
is separate and distinct from the
enablement requirement. The purpose of the
"written description" requirement is
broader than to merely explain how to "make
and use"; the applicant must also convey
with reasonable clarity to those skilled in
the art that, as of the filing date sought,
he or she was in possession of the
invention. The invention is, for purposes
of the "written description" inquiry,
whatever is now claimed.
. . . [D]rawings alone may be suffi-cient
to provide the "written description of
the invention" required by § 112, first
paragraph.
Here, it is true that the appellants’ specification
only broadly refers to the element identified in Fig. 7 by the
numeral 48 as a “spiral” which, e.g., is “made from a wire”
(see page 15) and makes no mention of this spiral or wire
performing a cutting operation. It is also true that (1)
Auburn teaches that a spiral in the form of screw threads on a
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007