Appeal No. 1998-0408
Application No. 08/176,861
services, it is our opinion that one of ordinary skill in the
art reading the specification and claims as a whole would
understand what is meant by this claim language.
In light of the foregoing, we shall not sustain the
examiner's rejection of claims 20-22 and 28 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, second paragraph.
The obviousness rejections
Claims 1-4, 10-12, 26 and 27
Turning first to the examiner's respective rejections of
claims 1-4, 10-12, 26 and 27 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, we have
carefully considered the subject matter defined by these
claims. However, for reasons stated supra, no reasonably
definite meaning can be ascribed to certain language appearing
in the claims. As the court in In re Wilson, 424 F.2d 1382,
1385, 165 USPQ 494, 496 (CCPA 1970) stated:
All words in a claim must be considered in judging the
patentability of that claim against the prior art. If no
reasonably definite meaning can be ascribed to certain
terms in the claim, the subject matter does not become
obvious --the claim becomes indefinite.
In comparing the claimed subject matter with the applied
prior art, it is apparent to us that considerable speculations
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