Appeal No. 1997-1018
Application No. 08/369,944
compared to the amounts of this monomer disclosed by Salve
(see Application No. 07/934,060, amendment dated May 10, 1993,
Paper No. 5, page 3).
The examiner has not pointed to any facts or reasoning to
support his construction of the word “about” to include
amounts 3% by weight below the lower limit recited in claim 21
on appeal (see the Answer, pages 5 and 8). We do not find
such a construction reasonable in view of the ordinary meaning
of
the word “about” and the facts of this case. See In re
Woodruff, 919 F.2d 1575, 1577, 16 USPQ2d 1934, 1936 (Fed. Cir.
1990) (Disclosure of “about 1-5%” does allow for
concentrations slightly above 5%). Accordingly, we cannot
sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 21-24 under 35
U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by Salve.
B. The Rejections under § 103
We adopt our analysis of the primary references of Howes
and Salve and our claim construction as discussed above.
The examiner has rejected claims 21-28 under § 103 as
unpatentable over Howes in view of Hodgson or Cole. As
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