Appeal No. 96-3157 Page 11
Application 08/088,136
With this as background, it is clear to us that we cannot
sustain the examiner's bases for this rejection (answer, pp.
8-9). In that regard, we regard the appellant's use of the
phrase "perceptible to the customer" to define the metes and
bounds of a claimed invention with a reasonable degree of
precision and particularity. As to the examiner's question as
to how presenting a menu to the customer (presumably the menu
prepared by the claimed method) would safeguard the customer
against ingestion of selected ingredients, we refer the
examiner to the appellant's specification. In this regard, we
note that the claims under appeal use the term safeguard, not
the term prevent.
For the reasons set forth above, the decision of the
examiner to reject claims 1, 2, 6, 8 to 12 and 19 to 21 under
35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, is reversed.
The improper dependent claim issue
We will not sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 20
and 21 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, fourth paragraph, as being of
improper dependent form for failing to further limit the
subject matter of a previous claim.
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