Appeal No. 1994-4024 Page 2
Application No. 07/759,865 Paper No. 31
the lens mounts to be made of plastic (Paper No. 23 at 4).
The examiner relied on Doi, U.S. Patent No. 4,239,364 at 8-10
and 40-46 (16 Dec. 1980) for the suggestion to mold mounts
from plastic to reduce the weight of the camera (Paper No. 23
at 4).
In the appeal, the claims stood or fell together, so the
Board selected as the representative claim Appellant's
claim 7:
A mount for an apparatus adapted to be attached
to and detached from a mount of another apparatus,
said mount for the apparatus being molded of plastic
material, wherein:
a circumferential groove or projection is
provided by molding on an abutment surface of said
mount for the apparatus which comes into contact
with said mount of said other apparatus.
(Paper 7 (Supp. Amdt.) at 2-3.) While Appellant's
specification discloses a plastic camera mount with a
circumferential groove to reduce defacement of the mount
(Paper No. 1 at 7:6-23), the claim is directed to "A mount for
an apparatus" and "a mount for another apparatus" without
explicitly stating what each respective apparatus was. The
examiner's answer offered no construction for claim 7 or any
other claim.
In the decision, the Board concluded that the broadest
reasonable interpretation in light of the specification was
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