Appeal No. 1998-2065
Application 08/713,788
rejection of claims 6, 7 and 9 through 16, the examiner’s
explanation is not clear as to whether the rejection is based
on a purported failure of the appellants’ specification to
comply with the written description requirement or the
enablement requirement of this section of the statute. For2
the sake of completeness, we have analyzed the rejection in
terms of both.
The test for determining compliance with the written
description requirement is whether the disclosure of the
application as originally filed reasonably conveys to the
artisan that the inventors had possession at that time of the
later claimed subject matter, rather than the presence or
absence of
literal support in the specification for the claim language.
In re Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366, 1375, 217 USPQ 1089, 1096 (Fed.
Cir. 1983). The content of the drawings may also be
2The written description and enablement requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 112, first
paragraph, are separate and distinct. Vas-Cath, Inc. v. Mahurkar, 935 F.2d 1555, 1563,
19 USPQ2d 1111, 1117 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
7
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