Appeal No. 96-2739
Application 08/185,320
and meaning into the claims and hence is a necessary
limitation to them" Loctite Corp. v. Ultraseal, Ltd., 781 F.2d
861, 866,
228 USPQ 90, 92 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
In this instance, we find that claim 17 recites in the
body of the claim, "the arbitrarily located encoded
information region" (emphasis added), thus directly referring
back to the preamble language recited supra, and allowing the
preamble language to "breath life and meaning" into the claim
as a whole. Thus, the "unspecified arbitrary location" where
the "description of the location of the field data", recited
in the preamble, is considered to represent an additional
structural limitation rather than mere introductory language.
In response, the Examiner states that "figure 2 of
Shepard clearly shows the document form 100 that includes the
ID number 102 arbitrarily located in the upper left corner."
If one were to read Shepard as "arbitrarily" locating the
ID number in the upper left corner to meet Appellants' claim
language, we are at a loss to find how this location is also
"unspecified" as claimed. To the contrary, Shepard has
8
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