Appeal No. 98-1026
Application 08/423,067
Having carefully considered appellants’ specification and
claims, the teachings of the applied references, and the
respective positions expressed by appellants and the examiner,
it is our determination that the standing § 103 rejections of
the appealed claims cannot be sustained. Our reasons follow.
First, we do not agree with the examiner’s finding that
Levenhagen discloses a bin comprising a collar that is
"bonded" to the open face of the container portion. It is a
well settled maxim of patent law that, in proceedings before
the PTO, claims must be given their broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the specification, and that the
claim language cannot be read in a vacuum, but instead must be
read in light of the specification as it would be interpreted
by one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. See, for
example, In re Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ 385, 388
(Fed. Cir. 1983). A commonly accepted meaning for the verb
"bond" is "[t]o join securely, as with cement or glue."2
Based on this definition, and consistent with appellants’
specification, which discloses that the bin is a two-piece
2Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary copyright © 1984 by Houghton
Mifflin Company.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007