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 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007