Appeal No. 1998-1053
Application No. 07/974,832
the examiner as being allowed, are unclear, sometimes
inconsistent, and indefinite.
Turning to the examiner's rejections of the appealed
claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, we emphasize again that the
claims on appeal contain unclear language which renders the
subject matter thereof indefinite for reasons stated supra as
part of our new ground of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112,
second paragraph. Accordingly, we find that it is not possible
to apply the prior art relied upon by the examiner to the
appealed claims in deciding the question of obviousness under
35 U.S.C. § 103 without resorting to considerable speculation
and conjecture as to the meaning of the questioned limitations
in the claims. This being the case, we are constrained to
reverse the examiner's rejection of claims 1 through 11, 14,
17 through 30 and 33 through 37 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 in light
of the holding in In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859, 862-63, 134 USPQ
292, 295 (CCPA 1962). We hasten to add that this reversal of
the examiner's rejections is not based on the merits of the
rejections, but on technical grounds relating to the
indefiniteness of the appealed claims.
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