Appeal No. 96-3603 Page 3
Application No. 08/243,839
latitude applicants have during prosecution to amend their
claims to clarify their intent and to avoid prior art. Id.;
In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1056, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1029 (Fed.
Cir. 1997).
The starting point for claim construction is always the
language of the claim itself. Comark Comm. Inc. v. Harris
Corp., 156 F.3d 1182, 1186, 48 USPQ2d 1001, 1005 (Fed. Cir.
1998); Desper Prods. Inc. v. QSound Labs. Inc., 157 F.3d 1325,
1332, 48 USPQ2d 1088, 1093 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Appellant stated
that all of the appealed claims stood or fell together.
(Paper No. 11 at 3.) Pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7), we
selected claim 4 as representative of the group. (Paper No.
18 at 1-2.) Claim 4 requires "an opening structure in said
connection pattern." The claim itself does not define
"opening structure" beyond the functional limitation that it
open something at sometime and the structural limitation that
it be in the connection pattern. Nothing in the language of
claim 4 excludes a diode as an opening structure or requires
the use of a fuse pattern. Both the specification and the
related art support our construction that an opening structure
may be a diode.
In the specification, Appellant explains the opening
structure as follows:
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