Appeal No. 2001-1074 Page 6
Application No. 08/989,056
terms is permitted even though the claim language is not as
precise as the examiner might desire. If the scope of the
invention sought to be patented can be determined from the
language of the claims with a reasonable degree of certainty,
a rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, is inappropriate.
Thus, the failure to provide explicit antecedent basis
for terms does not always render a claim indefinite. As
stated above, if the scope of a claim would be reasonably
ascertainable by those skilled in the art, then the claim is
not indefinite. See Ex parte Porter, 25 USPQ2d 1144, 1146
(Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1992).
With this as background, we have reviewed the specific
objections under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, raised by
the examiner (answer, pp. 3-4) but fail to see how the scope
of the invention sought to be patented cannot be determined
from the language of the claims with a reasonable degree of
certainty especially since the mere breadth of a claim does
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