Appeal No. 1999-0218
Application 08/691,889
claim is reversed, as is the § 102 rejection of its dependent
claims 2 and 4-7.
In the interest of completeness, we have also considered
whether Beguin satisfies element B of claim 1, i.e., "means
for indicating the approximate time in conversational terms."
The terms "approximate time" and "conversational terms" are
not defined in the specification and therefore must be given
their broadest reasonable interpretations. As the claim fails
to specify that the time is approximate as to minutes, the
term "approximate time," when given its broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the disclosure, is broad enough
to read on a time that is approximate as to minutes or seconds
and thus reads on Beguin in two different ways. First, when
hand 7 is between pointing directly to one of indicators 21
and 22, it indicates the time exactly in minutes but only
approximately as to seconds. Second, when the hand is
pointing between the indicators, it indicates the time
approximately as to both minutes and seconds. (In both cases,
the hand indicates the hour exactly.) Nevertheless, element B
is not satisfied, because the time is not indicated, i.e.,
displayed, in "conversational terms," which when broadly
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