Appeal No. 1999-0936
Application No. 08/890,263
this regard, while it is true that the terms “first” and
“second” in reissue claim 3 are broader than the terms “upper”
and “lower” used in patent claim 3, this circumstance alone is
not sufficient to warrant a conclusion that reissue claim 3
lacks descriptive support. See In re Rasmussen, 650 F.2d
1212, 1214, 211 USPQ 323, 326 (CCPA 1981)(an applicant is not
limited to claiming only the specific embodiment described in
the specification, but may instead claim his invention as
broad as the prior art and his disclosure will allow). In the
present instance, there is
nothing in the patent disclosure when read in its entirety
that would lead one of ordinary skill in the art to conclude
that the inventive method necessarily depends on positioning
the suction cups such that they are oriented in upper and
lower positions. In fact, certain passages in the patent
specification that describe the invention in more general
terms suggest just the opposite, i.e., that orienting the
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