Appeal No. 2000-0588 Page 17
Application No. 08/824,110
the claims of a patent, with adequate notice demanded by due process of law, so that
they may more readily and accurately determine the boundaries of protection involved
and evaluate the possibility of infringement and dominance. Hammack, 427 F.2d at
1382, 166 USPQ at 208. Moreover, in order to satisfy the requirements of the second
paragraph of § 112, a claim must accurately define the invention in the technical sense.
See In re Knowlton, 481 F.2d 1357, 1366, 178 USPQ 486, 492-93 (CCPA 1973). In
addition, while the claim language of claims 2, 3, 19, 20 and 22 may appear, for the
most part, to be understandable when read in the abstract, no claim may be read apart
from and independent of the supporting disclosure on which it is based. See In re
Cohn, 438 F.2d 989, 993, 169 USPQ 95, 98 (CCPA 1971).
Claim 2 recites that the “timing signal comprises a clock signal and a trigger
signal.” As set forth in appellants’ underlying disclosure, however, the terms timing
signal and trigger signal appear to be used interchangeably. Clock signals, on the other
hand, are generated by a clock circuit 62 and counted by a counter 76. A random
number generator 68 generates a first random number which is input to a scaler 74,
which scales the random number to the number of clock signals generated by the clock
circuit 62 in a nominal interval and stores the resulting value in a register 74. The value
in register 74 and the number of signals in the counter 76 are then input into a
comparator 78, which generates a first trigger signal when the value in register 74 and
the number of signals in the counter 76 are equal. See appellants’ Figure 4 and
Page: Previous 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007