Appeal No. 1999-0515 Page 5
Application No. 08/620,256
The Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. § 112, Second Paragraph
While the appellant is free to claim his invention in
broad terms and is entitled to the broadest reasonable
interpretation of the claim language, because a patentee has
the right to exclude others from making, using and selling the
invention covered by the patent, the public must be apprised of
exactly what the patent covers, so that those who would
approach the area circumscribed by the claims of a patent may
more readily and accurately determine the boundaries of
protection involved and evaluate the possibility of
infringement and dominance. It is to this that the second
paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 is directed (see In re Hammack,
427 F.2d 1378, 1382, 166 USPQ 204, 208 (CCPA 1970)), and it is
on the basis of this that we have evaluated the examiner’s
Section 112 rejection.
The examiner has cited several instances which are
believed to give rise to indefiniteness in the claims. The
first two of these concern the use of the terms “spinning
baseball” and “typically pitched,” which appear in independent
claims 1 and 11. In our view, neither of these terms is
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