Appeal No. 1997-4000
Application 08/319,004
(see pages 5 through 7 in the answer). In the examiner’s
view, “[c]onsidering the literally hundreds of club heads
available on the market today, it is difficult to determine
what is meant by the term ‘standard’” (answer, page 7). The
appellants counter that the term “standard” is meaningful to
one skilled in the art and therefore is not indefinite (see
pages 1 and 2 in the reply brief).
The second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 requires claims
to set out and circumscribe a particular area with a
reasonable degree of precision and particularity. In re
Johnson, 558 F.2d 1008, 1015, 194 USPQ 187, 193 (CCPA 1977).
In determining whether this standard is met, the definiteness
of the language employed in the claims must be analyzed, not
in a vacuum, but always in light of the teachings of the prior
art and of the particular application disclosure as it would
be interpreted by one possessing the ordinary level of skill
in the pertinent art. Id.
Because the disclosure in the instant application does
not contain a definition of the term “standard,” it provides
little help in understanding the meaning to be attributed to
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