Appeal No. 99-0920
Application No. 08/629,323
The section 112, first paragraph, rejection
The adhesive zones of the appellants’ invention are now
claimed as being “curvilinear”, and the examiner considers
this term to be not descriptively supported by the originally
filed disclosure and more particularly not supported by the
term “annular” which the appellants used in their originally
filed disclosure to describe these adhesive zones. We agree
with the examiner that the now claimed term “curvilinear” is
not descriptively supported by the appellants’ originally
filed disclosure and therefore fails to satisfy the written
description requirement set forth in the first paragraph of 35
U.S.C. § 112.
The test for determining compliance with the written
description requirement is whether the disclosure of the
application as originally filed reasonably conveys to the
artisan that the inventor had possession at that time of the
later claimed subject matter rather than the presence or
absence of literal support in the specification for the claim
language. In re Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366, 1375, 217 USPQ 1089,
1096 (Fed. Cir. 1983).
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007