Appeal No. 1995-1539
Application No. 07/950,388
ingredients or steps. See In re Baxter, 656 F.2d 679, 686,
210 USPQ 795, 802 (CCPA 1981) (the term “comprising” permits
inclusion of additional ingredients or steps which are not
recited in a claim). According to appellant (specification,
page 2, lines 26-28), the substituted 4-hydroxystyrene
produced in the claimed process is “of sufficient purity that
distillation is not required for most applications (emphasis
ours).”
We turn first to the rejection of claims 1, 2, 4 and 5
under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. The purpose of the
second paragraph of Section 112 is to basically insure, with a
reasonable degree of particularity, an adequate notification
of the metes and bounds of what is being claimed. See In re
Hammack, 427 F.2d 1378, 1382, 166 USPQ 204, 208 (CCPA 1970).
According to In re Moore, 439 F.2d 1232, 1235, 169 USPQ 236,
238 (CCPA 1971), the determination of whether the claims of an
application satisfy the requirements of the second paragraph
of Section 112 is
merely to determine whether the claims do, in fact,
set out and circumscribe a particular area with a
reasonable degree of precision and particularity.
It is here where the definiteness of language
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