Appeal No. 1998-2011
Application No. 08/707,267
Indeed, the fundamental purpose of a patent claim is to define the scope of protection5
and hence what the claim precludes others from doing. All things considered, because a
patentee has the right to exclude others from making, using and selling the invention covered
by a United States letters patent, the public must be apprised of what the patent covers, so that
those who approach the area circumscribed by the claims of a patent may more readily and
accurately determine the boundaries of protection in evaluating the possibility of infringement
and dominance. See In re Hammack, 427 F.2d 1378, 1382, 166 USPQ 204, 208 (CCPA
1970).
In the present case, we have reviewed the appellant's disclosure to help us determine the
meaning of the above-noted terminology from claim 1. That review has revealed that the
appellant's specification states at pages 5 and 6 that: (1) the casing of Figure 5 is corrugated and
is formed of "square U-section rings," (2) the rings are each formed by a pair of identical legs
of a width w measured radially of the axis A which is "identical" to a width w measured
parallel to the axis of bights joining the legs of each ring together and (3) the width w is "equal
to about" one fifth of a diameter D of the heater. Additionally, the appellant's Figure 5 shows
the bights 11 having no curvature along a direction parallel to the axis A of the heater.
However, these portions of the disclosure do not provide explicit guidelines defining the
terminology "generally," "similarly generally" and "substantially." Furthermore, there are no
5See In re Vamco Machine & Tool, Inc., 752 F.2d 1564, 1577 n.5, 224 USPQ 617, 625 n.5 (Fed. Cir.
1985).
5
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