Appeal No. 1997-4385
Application No. 08/288,864
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.), 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.
With the above in mind, we interpret the word
“preventing” in the appellant’s claim 19 to mean “impeding.”
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