Appeal No. 96-1983
Application No. 08/222,784
claim 1. Finally, the examiner’s objection as to where the
“latching means” [line 29] is located does not properly raise
a question of indefiniteness. The OR-gate means of claim 1 is
connected to “a latching means.” The location of this
latching means is not relevant to the question of
definiteness. The location of the latching means relates to
the breadth of the claim and to nothing else.
We agree with appellants that the artisan having
considered the specification of this application would have no
difficulty ascertaining the scope of the invention recited in
independent claim 1. Since the examiner had indicated in the
final rejection that the objections to dependent claims 2-9
were of the same type as discussed for independent claim 1, we
also find that the scope of these claims would be clear to the
artisan having considered the specification of this
application. We do note for the record, however, that the
examiner’s technical objection of claim 4 in the answer is
correct. That is, the phrase “said OR-gate” in line 5 should
be --said 3-way OR-gate-- to distinguish the 3-way OR-gate of
claim 4 from the OR-gate of claim 1. We see no reason why
this technical error cannot be corrected by examiner’s
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