Appeal No. 96-4204
Application 08/148,307
The examiner has attempted to read the claims on the
disclosure of Albert on pages 3-4 of the answer. With respect to
independent claim 1, appellant argues that the masses of Albert
identified by the examiner as the first mass [30 or 32] and the
second mass [34 or 36] are not part of a planar sensor plate as
required by claim 1. The examiner responds that Albert meets
this limitation since “the definition of ‘plane’ defined by the
examiner is ‘to be within the same region and/or area’ wherein
the transducer sensor have a two-dimensional characteristic”
[answer, page 6].
Our first observation is that the examiner is not free to
define a term of the claim in a manner which is inconsistent with
the conventional meaning of the term and is also inconsistent
with the definition of the term disclosed in an applicant’s
specification. An item is planar only if all points of the item
exist in a single plane. This is the accepted definition of
planar and the definition intended by appellant. As appellant
points out, the masses of Albert identified by the examiner are
not part of a planar sensor plate as required by claim 1. We
note that the examiner has identified a portion of Albert which
discusses that the masses can be selected so that the center of
gravity of the masses will lie on the same plane as the vibratory
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