Appeal No. 96-2692 Application 08/310,892 Appellants' claims 1, 7 and 15 recite "whereby a redistribution of the distributed data subsets that . . . minimizes the number of operations, passes data the minimum distance necessary, and minimizes buffer memory requirements is achieved." On pages 8 and 9 of the answer, the Examiner argues that Appellants’ claims are indefinite because they do not previously set forth the operations, the minimum distance and buffer memory requirements. Appellants argue in the reply brief that since a whereby clause is considered to be merely an embellishment on the claim to aid understanding, the proper stance for the Examiner to take is to give no patentable weight to statements made in the whereby clause. Appellants argue that it is improper to reject the claim because specific terms in the whereby clause are not found in the body of the claim. However, Appellants' argument does establish that the claim language is indefinite. The proper determination under 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007