Appeal No. 96-1943
Application No. 08/147,008
court in In re Swinehart, 439 F.2d 210, 213, 169 USPQ 226, 229
(CCPA 1971) stated:
there is no support, either in the actual holdings
of our prior cases or in the statute, for the
proposition, put forward here, that “functional”
language, in and of itself, renders a claim improper
[under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, second paragraph].
See also In re Hallman, 655 F.2d 212, 215, 210 USPQ 609, 611
(CCPA 1981): “It is well settled that there is nothing
intrinsically wrong in defining something by what it does
rather than what it is.”
As to claim 16, the examiner criticizes the recitation of
"means for direct endpoint sensing of the location of an end
effector connected to the second manipulator," contending that
the end effector must be positively recited. Once again we
are at a complete loss to understand such a contention since
the sixth paragraph of § 112 expressly provides that a claim
may be drafted in a means-plus-function format.
In view of the above, we will not sustain the rejection
of claims 34, 40, 41, 48, 51, 53-58 and 61-67 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, second paragraph.
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