Appeal No. 1998-0838
Application No. 08/265,858
We have carefully considered each of the points of argument
raised by appellant in the request for rehearing, however, those
arguments do not persuade us that our prior decision was in error
in any respect.
In contrast with appellant’s position that we have
misapprehended the primary distinction between the prior art
applied by the examiner and appellant’s invention, we recognize
that the slag handling system disclosed by appellant and that
disclosed in Hibbel are not the same, however, it is the claimed
subject matter which we have evaluated in this appeal relative to
the applied prior art and not the system as specifically
disclosed by appellant. During the prosecution of a patent
application, claims are given their broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the specification. See In re
Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1983);
In re Tanaka, 551 F.2d 855, 860, 193 USPQ 138, 141 (CCPA 1977).
However, limitations in the specification will not be read into
the claims. See In re Winkhaus, 527 F.2d 637, 639, 188 USPQ 129,
131 (CCPA 1975). In this particular case, we have given the
claimed slag handling system and, more particularly, the claim
language “closed loop sluice water system” in appellant’s
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