Appeal No. 1997-3096
Application 08/391,407
is the applicants’ burden to precisely define the invention, not the PTO’s. See 35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶
2 [statute omitted].”); York Prods., Inc. v. Central Tractor Farm & Family Ctr., 99 F.3d 1568,
1572-73, 40 USPQ2d 1619, 1622 (Fed. Cir. 1996), and cases cited therein (a claim term will be
given its ordinary meaning unless appellant discloses a novel use of that term); Zletz, supra
(“During patent prosecution the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms
reasonably allow. When the applicant states the meaning that the claim terms are intended to
have, the claims are examined with that meaning, in order to achieve a complete exploration of
the applicant’s invention and its relation to the prior art.”). Thus, the “sheet” of material acting
as a “deflector” can be of a shape which may generally fit and indeed, overlap the area of an
“inner panel” to the extent desired, and, as appellants disclose with respect to a “vehicle door,”
“[t]he arrangement and shape of the frame, panel and barrier would change, according to the
vehicle model” (specification, page 4, lines 18-19). Indeed, we take notice that at the time the
‘021 application was filed, there was a vast assortment of new, continued and discontinued
models of “vehicles” on the market, e.g., from automobiles to buses to earth-moving equipment,
with “inner panels” that collectively amount to innumerable outer or peripheral shapes and
dimensions.
Accordingly, we interpret the claim requirement that the “sheet” of material has “a
peripheral shape generally matching the peripheral configuration of the inner panel” to include
within its scope such a vast range of shapes and dimensions as to be almost limitless for all
practical intents and purposes.
Turning now to the terms regarding the material from which the “sheet” of “deflector”
material is made in claims 16 and 31, we interpret the claim language “comprising” at least “a
thermoplastic elastomer substantially filled with an inorganic filler” to include within its scope
any thermoplastic elastomer that is substantially filled with any inorganic filler which can
function as a “deflector” for water and sound when formed into a “sheet,” with respect to claims
16 and 31. We find that claim 16 further specifies that the “sheet” material must be “flat and
flexible,” while claim 31 would encompass flexible to inflexible, flat to non-flat “sheet” material
since this claim contains no limitations in this regard. It is apparent from the written description
in the specification (e.g., page 4, lines 21-22, and page 5, lines 4-8) that the term “substantially,”
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