Appeal No. 2001-0610 Page 4
Application No. 08/931,932
language employed in the claims must be analyzed, not in a vacuum, but always in light of
the teachings of the prior art and of the particular application disclosure as it would be
1
interpreted by one possessing the ordinary level of skill in the pertinent art.
The first issue is that claim 3 is indefinite because the “clearance” as recited is not
described and shown in the specification and the drawings, and therefore its location “is
not understood.” Claim 3 recites the clearance as being
between said cam element and said contoured surface free ends so that
said free ends may move between said cam element and said tubular body
interior along substantially 360º.
This is exactly the manner in which this clearance is described in the specification in lines
14-18 of page 3. The appellant has argued in the Brief that the claimed clearance is
illustrated in the drawings, and such appears to us to be the case. We therefore find
ourselves in agreement with the appellant that claim 3 is not indefinite for the reason set
out by the examiner.
The examiner also finds claim 16 to be indefinite, on two grounds. The first is that
the terms “tactile” and “audible” are not equivalents “as each would require entirely differing
structure” (Answer, page 2). Be that as it may, applying the guidance provided by our
reviewing court for evaluating the compliance of a claim with the second paragraph of
Section 112, we conclude that one of ordinary skill in the art would have no difficulty
1In re Johnson, 558 F.2d 1008, 1015, 194 USPQ 187, 193 (CCPA 1977).
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