Appeal No. 1998-2179 Page 8
Application No. 08/433,231
or otherwise that may be afforded by the written description contained in the applicant's
specification. In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
The appellant and the examiner disagree as to whether the language "individually one
after the other" precludes an overlapping conveyance as disclosed by Newsome on the first
conveyor. Appellant's Figure 2 illustrates the blanks 5 being conveyed on the first conveyors
14-17, upstream of the intermediate stores 18-21, in non-overlapping fashion. Furthermore, the
appellant's specification states, on page 4, that "the blank stack, serving as intermediate store,
also makes it possible for the blanks, initially occurring individually one after the other, to be
made into an imbricated stream" and, on page 5, that "with the provision of an imbricated
formation, more blanks can be fed to the winding core per unit of time than with the provision
of a blank stream with blanks arranged individually one after the other." From our
perspective, the appellant's specification makes clear that "individually one after the other" as
used in the specification and claims refers to a non-overlapping formation, a definition which
appears to us to be consistent with the ordinary and customary usage of this language.
Therefore, we accept the appellant's interpretation of the language "individually one after the
other" as precluding overlapping.
With regard to apparatus claim 12, however, we note that this language appears in a
means-plus-function clause "first conveying means for feeding the blanks individually one after
the other to an intermediate store." Consistent with the sixth paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112, in
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