Appeal No. 1998-3147
Application 08/564,304
claims. Accordingly, we reverse the examiner’s rejection.
REMAND
The appellants’ claim 12 requires that the process forms
a polyurethane. Polyurethanes have been defined as “[a] group
of synthetic materials characterized by the methane [sic,
urethane] group -NH@CO@O-”. Chandalia’s polyisocyanate2 3
prepolymer is the reaction product of a polyisocyanate and an
active hydrogen-containing compound which can be a polyol
(col. 2, lines 58-61) and, therefore, has -NH@CO@O- groups.
We remand the application to the examiner for the
examiner to reopen prosecution and for the examiner and the
appellants to address on the record whether “polyurethane” in
the appellants’ claim 12, when given its broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the specification, see In re
Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir.
1989); In re Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ 385, 388
(Fed. Cir. 1983); In re Herz, 537 F.2d 549, 551, 190 USPQ 461,
463 (CCPA 1976); In re Okuzawa, 537 F.2d 545, 548, 190 USPQ
2See Hackh’s Chemical Dictionary 703 (Julius Grant ed., McGraw-Hill 1969).
3Id. at 536.
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