Appeal No. 1997-0174 Page 7
Application No. 08/302,207
language of the claim with a reasonable degree of certainty, a
rejection of the claim under
35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, is inappropriate.
Furthermore, the appellant may use functional language,
alternative expressions, negative limitations, or any style of
expression or format of claim which makes clear the boundaries
of the subject matter for which protection is sought. As
noted by the Court in In re Swinehart, 439 F.2d 210, 160 USPQ
226 (CCPA 1971), a claim may not be rejected solely because of
the type of language used to define the subject matter for
which patent protection is sought.
With this as background, we analyze the specific
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, made by the
examiner of claim 8.
The examiner determined (answer, p. 4) that
[t]he claim is unclear as to the limitation imparted by
the language "sufficient torque" on line 6.
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