Appeal No. 97-0441
Application No. 08/511,841
Like appellant (reply brief, pages 2-4), we find that the
examiner’s interpretation of claim 17 on appeal (answer,
pages 5-7) totally ignores the clear import of the claim
language when the claim is viewed from the perspective of one
of ordinary skill in the art who has read appellant’s
specification. It is a well-settled maxim of our Patent law
that, in proceedings before the Patent and Trademark Office,
claims must be given their broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the specification, and that the claim language
cannot be read in a vacuum, but instead must be read in light
of the specification as it would be interpreted by one of
ordinary skill in the pertinent art. See In re Sneed, 710
F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1983). This the
examiner has clearly not done.
For the above reasons, the examiner's rejection of
appellant’s claims 2, 4, 5 and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being
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