Appeal No. 1996-3167 Page 9
Application No. 07/974,834
a rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, is inappropriate.
Furthermore, the appellants may use functional language,
alternative expressions, negative limitations, or any style of
expression or format of claim which makes clear the boundaries
of the subject matter for which protection is sought. As
noted by the Court in In re Swinehart, 439 F.2d 210, 160 USPQ
226 (CCPA 1971), a claim may not be rejected solely because of
the type of language used to define the subject matter for
which patent protection is sought.
With this as background, we have reviewed both (1) the
specific rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph,
made by the examiner of the claims on appeal (answer, pp. 11-
13) and (2) the appellants' argument against this rejection
(brief, pp. 21-22). From this review, we reach the conclusion
that the claims under appeal are definite, as required by the
second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112, since they define the
metes and bounds of the claimed invention with a reasonable
degree of precision and particularity for the reasons set
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