Appeal No. 1998-0046 Page 5
Application No. 08/357,320
When a word of degree is used the district court
must determine whether the patent's specification
provides some standard for measuring that degree.
The trial court must decide, that is, whether one of
ordinary skill in the art would understand what is
claimed when the claim is read in light of the
specification.
In the present case, we have reviewed the appellant's
disclosure to help us determine the meaning of the above-noted
terminology from claim 1. That review has revealed that the
appellant's specification does not use the terms "cutting
edges" or "parallel" or "substantially parallel" and, thus,
provides absolutely no guidance as to the meaning of
"substantially parallel."
The appellant's drawings, which are not engineering
drawings dimensioned and drawn to scale, provide no further
clarification with regard to this claim terminology. Figures
2a, 2b and 2c, which are described (specification, page 4) as
a front, plan and side view, respectively, of one example of a
cutter element, illustrate the cutter bits (4) in some detail.
The cutter bits (4) of Figure 2a do not appear to us to
comprise any edge extending parallel to the run of the endless
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