Appeal No. 2000-0510
Application No. 08/792,966
Reference is made to the brief (Paper No. 11) and the answer (Paper No. 12) for the
respective positions of the appellant and the examiner with regard to the merits of these
rejections.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellant's specification and claims1, to the applied prior art references, and to the respective
positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
make the determinations which follow.
The indefiniteness rejection
The legal standard for definiteness is whether a claim reasonably apprises those of skill
in the art of its scope. See In re Warmerdam, 33 F.3d 1354, 1361, 31 USPQ2d 1754, 1759
(Fed. Cir. 1994).
The examiner's basis for determining that the claims are indefinite, as set forth on page
3 of the answer, is as follows:
In claim 1, the recitations "the housing of one of the drive motors and
the housing of a corresponding gear drive are joined nonpositively to one
another" and "the housings of the gear drives are mounted nonpositively to the
portal axle" are vague and unclear because their meaning could be interpreted in
1 Consistent with the guidelines set forth on page 4, in lines 22-25, of the appellant's specification (see
Seattle Box Company, Inc. v. Industrial Crating & Packing, Inc., 731 F.2d 818, 826, 221 USPQ 568, 573-74
(Fed. Cir. 1984)), we interpret the terminology "substantially at a right angle" in claim 1 as requiring that the
motor be arranged at close enough to a perfect right angle relative to the axle to permit a low-floor portion to
extend on the same level as the low-floor portion in the door area over an acceptable width as determined by one
skilled in the art of designing commercial vehicles.
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007