Appeal No. 2001-2629 Page 4
Application No. 08/931,080
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
The Rejection Under Section 112, Second Paragraph
The second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 requires claims to set out and
circumscribe a particular area with a reasonable degree of precision and particularity.
In re Johnson, 558 F.2d 1008, 1015, 194 USPQ 187, 193 (CCPA 1977). In making this
determination, the definiteness of the 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 interpreted by one possessing the
ordinary level of skill in the pertinent art. Id.
The examiner has pointed out three errors in the claims which form the basis for
the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph (see Answer, page 6 and Paper
No. 16, page 4). The first of these is that the term “crotch” should be deleted from line
3 of claim 12 as reproduced in the appendix to the Substitute Brief, the second that “a”
should be “the” in lines 7 and 8 of claim 16, and the third that there is no antecedent
basis for “said absorbent disposable liner” in line 23 of claim 16. In view of the fact that
the appellants have not disputed the examiner’s position with regard to the three
matters raised above, and the discrepancies remain uncorrected, we are constrained to
sustain the Section 112 rejection.
The Rejections Under Section 103
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