Appeal No. 96-2552
Application 08/161,816
disk, although other types of storage media may be used."
(Col. 6, lines 52-56.) The personal computer has a cathode
ray tube (CRT) display (col. 7, line 60) and a way
(undisclosed, but conventionally a keyboard) to allow a user
to manually enter data (col. 8, lines 53-58). The Federal
Circuit construed the "computer processor means" in claim 1 as
a personal computer including a CPU", construed "first means
for initializing the storage medium" as "an arithmetic logic
circuit configured to prepare the data disk to magnetically
store selected data," and second, third, fourth, and fifth
means as the arithmetic logic circuit configured to perform
the various functions. Thus, although Boes did not describe
the internal structure of the computer as having a CPU and
arithmetic logic circuit, or the correspondence to the claimed
means, this conventional computer structure was considered to
be the structure corresponding to the claimed means. Claim 1
was not treated as a process claim despite the fact that Boes
did not describe any particular kind of computer. The Federal
Circuit's treatment of "means" claims is consistent with the
decision in In re Alappat, 33 F.3d 1526, 1541, 31 USPQ2d 1545,
1555 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (in banc) in which claims in means-plus-
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