Appeal No. 1997-2212 Page 6
Application No. 08/233,387
FORTRAN into machine codes, and its structure
conserve during compiling and decompiling (see Col.
3, lines 37-42). (Examiner’s Answer at 3.)
The appellants’ argue, “Robinson does not teach decompiling at
all, rather Robinson teaches only translating/assembling.”
(Reply Br. at 4.)
“[W]hen interpreting a claim, words of the claim are
generally given their ordinary and accustomed meaning, unless
it appears from the specification or the file history that
they were used differently by the inventor.” In re Paulsen,
30 F.3d 1475, 1480, 31 USPQ2d 1671, 1674 (Fed. Cir. 1994)
(citing Carroll Touch, Inc. v. Electro Mechanical Sys., Inc.,
15 F.3d 1573, 1577, 27 USPQ2d 1836, 1839 (Fed. Cir. 1993)).
Here, claims 1-9 and 11-19 each specifies in pertinent part
the following limitations: “decompiling the machine program,
thereby producing a second high-level language source program
which does not depend on any architecture ....” Because
neither the specification nor the file history defines the
term “decompiling” nor suggests that the appellants sought to
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