Appeal No. 1998-2011
Application No. 08/707,267
guidelines that would be implicit to a person skilled in the art defining these terms that would
enable such a person to ascertain what is meant by this terminology. Absent such guidance, we
are of the opinion that a skilled person would not be able to determine the metes and bounds of
the claimed invention with the precision required by the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112.
Moreover, it is not clear whether the terminology "the transverse widths all being generally the
same" requires that all of the leg widths be generally the same as one another and all of the
bight widths be generally the same as one another or, alternatively, that the leg widths be
generally the same as the bight widths. Therefore, we conclude that the appellant has failed to
particularly point out and distinctly claim the invention as required by the second paragraph of
35 U.S.C. § 112.
New Grounds of Rejection
In light of the above, we enter the following new grounds of rejection under the
provisions of 37 CFR § 1.196(b).
Claims 1-3, 7 and 9-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being
indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the invention.
As discussed above, the appellant's specification does not provide guidelines defining
the terminology "generally," "similarly generally" and "substantially" as used in independent
claim 1. Further, it is not clear whether the terminology "the transverse widths all being
generally the same" requires that all of the leg widths be generally the same as one another and
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