Appeal No. 97-3917
Application 08/467,650
capacitor electrode through the dielectric film. Not all of
the first capacitor electrode’s constituent electrode layers
have to be confronting the second capacitor electrode in order
to say that the first capacitor electrode confronts the second
capacitor electrode. Nothing requires reading into claim 1
this "all layers must confront" aspect of the appellant’s
disclosed preferred embodiment to make sense of the claim.
Thus, the feature is extraneous to the claimed invention and
should not be read into the claims. In re Prater, 415 F.2d
1393, 1404,
162 USPQ 541, 550 (CCPA 1969). During patent examination,
claim terms are properly given their broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the specification. In re
Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir.
1989); In re Yamamoto, 740 F.2d 1569, 1571, 222 USPQ 934, 936
(Fed. Cir. 1984).
Note further that in an amendment filed February 5, 1997
(Paper No. 8), the appellant deleted this language from claim
1 concerning the dielectric film: "being formed to confront
the side surface of said second-layer electrode". Thus, it is
not necessary that the second-layer electrode be confronted by
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