Appeal No. 1996-0951 Page 5
Application No. 07/880,793
Regarding the definiteness of claims 1, 2, 4, and 20-22,
the appellant argues, “the term ‘message’ should be
interpreted as human language words such as words of text
....” (Appeal Br. at 5.) In response, the examiner opines,
“[i]t is not clear just what is claimed in regard to
‘message’.” (Examiner’s Answer at 5.)
We cannot find that the claims do not particularly point
out and distinctly claim the limitation of “messages.” The
test for the definiteness of a claim is whether one skilled
in the art would understand the bounds of the claim when read
in light of the specification. If the claim read in light of
the specification would reasonably apprise one so skilled of
the scope of the invention, 35 U.S.C. § 112 demands no more.
Miles Labs., Inc. v. Shandon Inc., 997 F.2d 870, 875, 27
USPQ2d 1123, 1126 (Fed. Cir. 1993).
Here, the specification describes messages as follows.
The message list contains only the relevant
messages for the particular feature (window/control
etc.) which has been selected. If the currently
selected item is a window the messages relating to
windows (WM_****) are added to the list.
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