Appeal No. 2001-2338
Application 08/996,360
cushioning and protection apparatus (e.g., Fig. 2) for the
stadium seat armrests which can be easily installed on and
removed from the armrest and easily transported to and from the
outdoor stadium by the user. Also of importance to appellant is
the possibility of the outer surface of the cushioning and
protection apparatus having indicia thereon, such as a team name
or logo. On page 9 of the reply brief (Paper No. 27) appellant
specifically argues that he has defined outdoor seating as being
“permanently mounted inside [an] arena” (specification, page 1,
lines 18-19), such as an outdoor sports stadium, and used the
recitation of a “substantially non-movable chair” in the claims
on appeal to define such a stadium or outdoor seat permanently
mounted in place.
Before the USPTO, when evaluating claim language during
examination of an application, the examiner is required to give
the terminology of a claim its broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the specification, and to remember that the claim
language cannot be read in a vacuum, but instead must be read in
light of the specification as it would have been interpreted by
one of ordinary skill in the pertinent art. See In re Sneed,
7120 F.2d 1544, 1548, 218 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1983); In re
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