Appeal No. 95-3876
Application 08/222,009
afforded by the written description contained in the
applicant's specification"). It is also axiomatic that
limitations from examples given in the specification cannot be
read into the claims. Constant v. Advanced Micro-Devices,
Inc., 848 F.2d 1560, 1571, 7 USPQ2d 1057, 1064 (Fed. Cir.
1988); In re Priest, 582 F.2d 33, 37, 199 USPQ 11, 15 (CCPA
1978); and In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05, 162 USPQ 541,
550-51 (CCPA 1969). Furthermore, the fact that each of
appellants' disclosed embodiments of flash fire control
circuit 5 employs a transistor Q3 which is directly responsive
to the flash terminating signal for short-circuiting the gate
of the IGBT to ground is not in and of itself a sufficient
basis for construing the claim language as implicitly
requiring a device (e.g., a transistor) for short-circuiting
the IGBT gate to ground (or, more broadly, to a source of
reference potential) in response to the flash terminating
signal. See Specialty Composites v. Cabot Corp., 845 F.2d
981, 988, 6 USPQ2d 1601, 1605 (Fed. Cir. 1988) ("Where a
specification does not require a limitation, that limitation
should not be read from the specification into the claims.")
(Original emphasis.); Lemelson v. United States, 752 F.2d
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