Appeal No. 96-3969
Application No. 08/271,311
equivalence of the two sources. As correctly pointed out by
the Examiner at page 4 of the Answer, Appellants have not
questioned this proposed modification of the Rabl reference.
Rather, Appellants' sole point of contention with respect to
independent claims 1 and 4 centers on the recited
"preferential angle of incidence" characteristic of the
claimed filter. The relevant portion of claim 1 reads as
follows:
positioning a filter to filter said
parallel rays, said filter having a
preferential angle of incidence, wherein
said filter provides maximum transmission
of a selected wavelength of said laser
beam at said angle of incidence;
The Examiner contends that the description and Figure 1
illustration in Rabl of light entering the filter F at an
A
angle of 90 degrees meets the claimed limitation since, in the
Examiner's view, a preferential angle of incidence can be any
angle including ninety degrees (Answer, page 4). In response,
Appellants argue at page 10 of the Brief that the term
"preferential" in the claimed context clearly connotes that a
certain angle of incidence is chosen over other angles unlike
Rabl whose description is silent as to the selection of the
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