Appeal No. 2002-1593
Application 09/091,020
rejections of claims, they are reviewable by petition to the
Commissioner rather than by appeal to this Board (see In re
Hengehold, 440 F.2d 1395, 1403-04, 169 USPQ 473, 479 (CCPA 1971))
and will not be further addressed in this decision.
II. The merits of the appealed rejections
Both the written description and enablement rejections rest
on alleged deficiencies in the appellants’ disclosure, and
particularly in the drawing figure, with respect to the
peripheral cam elements set forth in claims 7 through 19 (see
pages 4 and 5 in the final rejection). Although the drawing
figure does not show these elements as seemingly required by 37
CFR § 1.83, the appellants’ disclosure as a whole does not on the
record justify the examiner’s written description and enablement
concerns.
The test for compliance with the written description
requirement is whether the disclosure of the application as
originally filed reasonably conveys to the artisan that the
inventors had possession at that time of the later claimed
subject matter, rather than the presence or absence of literal
support in the specification for the claim language. In re
Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366, 1375, 217 USPQ 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir.
1983).
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