Appeal No. 1997-3839
Application No. 08/120,144
accustomed meaning, unless it appears that the inventor used them differently."
Envirotech Corp. v. Al George, Inc., 730 F.2d 753, 759, 221 USPQ 473, 477 (Fed. Cir.
1984). Second, it is equally "fundamental that claims are to be construed in the light of the
specification and both are to be read with a view to ascertaining the invention." United
States v. Adams, 383 U.S. 39, 49, 148 USPQ 479, 482 (1966).
Furthermore, the general claim construction principle that limitations found only in
the specification of a patent or patent application should not be imported or read into a
claim must be followed. See In re Priest, 582 F.2d 33, 37, 199 USPQ 11, 15 (CCPA
1978). One must be careful not to confuse impermissible imputing of limitations from the
specification into a claim with the proper reference to the specification to determine the
meaning of a particular word or phrase recited in a claim. See E.I. Du Pont de Nemours
& Co. v. Phillips Petroleum Co., 849 F.2d 1430, 1433, 7 USPQ2d 1129,
1131 (Fed. Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 986 (1988). What we are dealing with in
this case is the construction of the limitations recited in the appealed claims. From our
review of the specification and the language of the claims, claim 5 is directed to an
invention having a plurality of reset conditions and initializing selected portions of the
volatile memory which are determined by the type of reset. Some portions of the memory
must be reset in each type of reset.
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