Appeal No. 97-1754
Application 08/462,133
shaft in spaced vertical relation to each other, as called for
in claim 2. On this basis alone the standing § 103 rejection
of claim 2 cannot be sustained.
As to the standing § 103 rejection of claim 3, for
reasons stated infra in our treatment of the examiner’s
rejection of the appealed claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, we also have encountered considerable difficulty
understanding the meaning of certain terminology appearing in
appealed claim 3. However, in this instance, we do not
understand the metes and bounds of the claimed subject matter
sufficiently to be able to address the merits of the
examiner’s § 103 rejection. While we might speculate as to
what is meant by the claim language, our uncertainty provides
us with no proper basis for making the comparison between that
which is claimed and the prior art, as we are obligated to do.
Rejections based on 35 U.S.C. § 103 should not be based upon
“considerable speculation as to the meaning of the terms
employed and assumptions as to the scope of the claims.” In
re Steele, supra. When no reasonably definite meaning can be
ascribed to certain terms in a claim, the subject matter does
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