Appeal No. 1998-2083
Application No. 08/471,584
claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
determinations which follow.
The indefiniteness issue
We will not sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 78
through 81 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph.
Claims are considered to be definite, as required by the
second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112, when they define the
metes and bounds of a claimed invention with a reasonable
degree of precision and particularity. See In re Venezia, 530
F.2d 956, 958, 189 USPQ 149, 151 (CCPA 1976).
The examiner determined (final rejection, page 3 and the
advisory action mailed August 26, 1997) that the antecedent
basis for “the lowered position” and “the raised position” of
claims 78 and 79 was unclear (see claim 78, lines 23-25).2
The appellants argue (brief, pages 6 and 7) that claims
2All references in this decision to lines in the claims are to the
claims as they appear in “Appendix A” of the brief.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007