Appeal No. 1997-2016 Page 7
Application No. 08/196,126
having "approximately same surface area" and with at least one substrate being non-transparent,
comprising, inter alia, first means for receiving and retaining a substrate in a first working area,
alignment means for aligning the substrate, second means located in a second working area for
receiving and retaining aligned substrates to be deposited one upon another and means for
transporting substrates aligned in the first working area to the second working area and for
depositing the aligned substrates one upon another.
It is apparent from the appellants' underlying disclosure that "surface area" as used in
the claims refers to the footprint of each of the substrates as viewed in a direction normal to the
bonding surfaces of the substrates. While it is true that "approximately" and other similar
words are sometimes construed liberally to avoid unduly restricting a patent claim, the
imprecision of such a word cannot be allowed to negate the meaning of the words it modifies.
The use of the modifier "approximately" in the context of claims 9 and 10, we think, was
intended to allow for irregular deviations, resulting from machining tolerances, from perfectly
identical footprints of the substrates to be aligned, stacked and bonded together and not to
broaden the scope of "same surface area" to encompass substrates which are distinctly not of
the same footprint by design. Arvin Industries, Inc. v. Berns Air King Corp., 525 F.2d 182,
185, 188 USPQ 49, 51 (7th Cir. 1975). See also Amhil Enterprises, Ltd. v. Wawa, Inc., 81
F.3d 1554, 1562, 38 USPQ2d 1471, 1476 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (In view of specification,
prosecution history, and prior art, "substantially vertical face" in the patent's claim must be
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