Appeal No. 1996-3550
Application 08/218,165
Claims 1 through 37 stand rejected as indefinite under the second paragraph of 35
U.S.C. § 112; the rejection is set forth on page 5 of the Examiner’s Answer.
“The language employed [in a claim] must be analyzed -- not in a vacuum, but
always in light of the teachings of the prior art and of the particular application disclosure
as it would be interpreted by one possessing the ordinary level of skill in the pertinent art.”
In re Moore, 439 F.2d 1232, 1235, 169 USPQ 236, 238 (CCPA 1971) (footnote omitted).
Having reviewed the claims in light of the specification, we agree with appellants that one
skilled in the art would have no difficulty in interpreting the terms “green note compound,”
“providing,” “active,” “includes,” and “in a continuous manner,” in the context of the claims.
The rejection is reversed.
Rejection II
Claims 1 through 5, 7 through 9, and 11 through 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102 (b) as anticipated by Pascal (Examiner’s Answer, page 6). Our review of this
rejection is hampered by the examiner’s reliance on two separate and unrelated portions
of the reference as evidence of anticipation.
First, the examiner cites Pascal’s discussion of one of a number of studies
“performed to determine and measure the ability of certain plant tissues” to form green
note compounds (Pascal, page 3):
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