Appeal No. 2002-0322
Application 08/681,870
Rather than reiterate the respective positions advanced by the examiner and appellants,
we refer to the examiner’s answer and to appellants’ brief and reply brief for a complete
exposition thereof.
Opinion
As an initial matter, we must interpret claims 1, 9 and 10, mindful that we must give the
language thereof the broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the specification as it would be
interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art. See, e.g., In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367, 1372,
54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000); In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d
1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed.
Cir. 1989). In doing so, the limitations of the specification, or any preferred embodiment or
example therein, will not be read into the claims. See generally, Zletz, supra; In re Priest,
582 F.2d 33, 37, 199 USPQ 11, 15 (CCPA 1978); In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05,
162 USPQ 541, 550-51 (CCPA 1969).
The appealed claims are drawn to a golf ball having a core and cover. In appealed claim
1, the cover “comprises” at least about 10 to 100 parts of an ethylene copolymer “including up
to” about 30% by weight of alkyl acrylate units, the ethylene copolymer being hydrolyzed and
neutralized by a metal salt to some extent. In appealed claim 10, the cover “comprises” at least
about 10 to 100 parts of an ethylene copolymer “including up to” about 30% by weight of alkyl
acrylate groups that have been hydrolyzed to the extent that about 5% to 90% of the “ester groups
are neutralized with an alkali metal cation.” We interpret the latter claim language to require that
the ester moieties of the alkyl acrylate units are hydrolyzed with an alkali metal salt such that the
resulting carboxylic acid moiety is neutralized with the alkali metal cation (see specification, e.g.,
page 6, lines 12-14). As the examiner points out (answer, page 4), the hydrolization of the alkyl
acrylate moieties of the ethylene copolymer to the corresponding alcohol and the corresponding
acid by an alkali metal salt wherein the acid moiety is simultaneously neutralized with the cation
of the alkali metal salt, is a well known reaction termed “saponification” in textbooks as well as
common and technical dictionaries,2 and does not result in free carboxylic acid moieties.
2 See, e.g., The Condensed Chemical Dictionary 909 (10th ed., Gessner G. Hawley, ed., New
York, Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, 1981).
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