Appeal No. 2001-0331 Page 12
Application No. 09/122,982
limitations appearing in the specification are not to be read
into the claims. In re Etter, 756 F.2d 852, 858, 225 USPQ 1, 5
(Fed. cir. 1985). We find that claim 1 recites “using the host
computer system for automatically, storing the native copy of the
data in a file; converting the file into a format that can be
emailed; and sending the converted file to the escrow computer as
an email message.” From the language of claim 1, we find that
the claim requires automatically performing each of the three
recited steps. Although we find that the automatic file back-ups
of the word processor programs referred to by the examiner will
automatically store a native copy of the data in a file when
executing an automatic backup routine, we find that neither the
word processor programs nor the references automatically perform
the steps of "converting the file into a format that can be e-
mailed; and sending the converted file to the escrow computer as
an e-mail message." Although we agree with the examiner that
these two steps can be performed by the systems of Hoffman,
Netscape 2, or Pegasus, we find that in the references applied by
the examiner, these steps are not automatically performed, but
rather are initiated by the operator of the system. The term
"automatically" cannot be ignored.
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