Appeal No. 97-1840 Page 7
Application No. 08/316,685
precise as the examiner might desire. If the scope of the
invention sought to be patented cannot be determined from the
language of the claims with a reasonable degree of certainty,
a rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, is appropriate.
Thus, the failure to provide explicit antecedent basis
for terms does not always render a claim indefinite. As
stated above, if the scope of a claim would be reasonably
ascertainable by those skilled in the art, then the claim is
not indefinite. See Ex parte Porter, 25 USPQ2d 1144, 1145
(Bd. Pat. App. & Inter. 1992).
With this as background, we have reviewed the specific
objections under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, made by
the examiner of the claims on appeal (answer, pp. 4-6).
However, after reviewing the specific objections, we find
ourselves in agreement with the position of the appellant
(brief, pp. 7-8) that the scope of the claims under appeal can
be determined from the language of the claims with a
reasonable degree of certainty. In addition, it is our
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