Appeal No. 2001-2269
Application No. 08/680,266
argues that the term "object" used in the claims is a broad term
and is not limited to object oriented technology. The Examiner
argues that even though the Sturges reference is not directed to
object oriented programming, the broad language used in
Appellant's claims does not preclude Sturges reading on the claim
language. See page 8 of the Examiner's answer.
In response, Appellant points out that Sturges does not
teach "automatically deallocating" as required by Appellant's
claims 19-30. See page 3 of the reply brief. The Appellant
further points out that the term "object" used in Appellant's
claims is indeed limited to a distributed object system because
of the special definitions recited in Appellant's specification.
See pages 3 and 4 of Appellant's reply brief. Appellant further
argues that the Examiner's interpretation of "an implementation
of the call to the object" ignores the common meaning of
implementation and the term's explicit definition in the
specification. See page 5 of Appellant's reply brief.
As pointed out by our reviewing court, we must first
determine the scope of claims 19 and 27. "[T]he name of the game
is the claim." In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362, 1369, 47 USPQ2d
1523, 1529 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Claims will be given their broadest
reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification, and
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