Appeal No. 98-2150
Application No. 08/539,926
Szymczak fails to disclose a wellhead housing which
includes a reference surface in addition to the
primary and secondary sealing surfaces. As
discussed above, this reference surface (14) is a
cylindrical surface which is used during production
of the wellhead housing as a reference for machining
both the primary sealing surface (12) and the
secondary sealing surface (16 or 18).
Such a separate surface is not disclosed in
Szymczak. Rather, Szymczak merely discloses a
wellhead housing (12) having a sealing surface (36)
which is engaged by the sealing surface (60) of a
first seal ring (52) during one mode of his
invention, and a sealing surface (38) which is
engaged by the sealing surface (112) of another seal
ring (84) during another mode of his invention (see
column 3, lines 36-45; column 4, lines 17-23).
Szymczak does not disclose a separate reference
surface from which sealing surfaces (36) and (38)
may be machined. [Brief, page 4.]
The appellant's arguments are not commensurate in scope
with the subject matter defined by representative claim 1.
As to the appellant's contention that Szymczak does not
disclose a reference surface used for machining the primary
and secondary sealing surfaces, representative claim 1 merely
broadly recites a "reference surface" (without making any
reference whatsoever to machining) and, giving this
terminology its broadest reasonable interpretation, the 3
3The terminology in a pending application's claims is to
(continued...)
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