Appeal No. 96-2833
Application 08/202,772
legally unsound. As stated in Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic
Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582, 39 USPQ2d 1573, 1576 (Fed. Cir.
1996): “Although the words in a claim are generally given
their ordinary and customary meaning, a patentee may choose to
be his own lexicographer and use terms in a manner other than
their ordinary meaning, as long as the special definition of
the term is clearly stated in the patent specification or file
history.” See also, Hormone Research Foundation Inc. v.
Genentech Inc., 904 F.2d 1558, 1563, 15 USPQ2d 1039, 1043
(Fed. Cir. 1990) (“It is a well-established axiom in patent
law that a patentee is free to be his or her own lexicographer
[citation omitted], and thus may use terms in a manner
contrary to or inconsistent with one or more of their ordinary
meanings. For this reason, an analysis of the specification
and prosecution history is important to proper claim
construction.”).
The examiner has not carried his burden of explaining why
the alleged inconsistency between appellants’ definition of
“soap” in their specification and the ordinary definition of
that term would have caused appellants’ claims, when
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