Appeal No. 2002-1633
Application 09/281,093
The appellants (see pages 8 through 10 in the main brief)
submit that the anticipation rejection of independent claim 1 is
unsound because Stevenson does not disclose a collating apparatus
meeting the limitations in the claim pertaining to the “track.”
The examiner (see pages 6 and 7 in the answer), citing a
definition of the term “track” as meaning “a path along which
something moves; a course” (answer, page 6),1 contends that these
limitations find full response in Stevenson’s steps 20.
During patent examination claims are to be given their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the underlying
specification without reading limitations from the specification
into the claims. In re Prater, 415 F.2d 1393, 1404-05, 162 USPQ
541, 550-51 (CCPA 1969). The definition of “track” advanced by
the examiner is fully consistent with both the ordinary and
accustomed meaning of this term2 and the manner in which it is
used the appellants’ specification, and is accurately descriptive
of Stevenson’s steps 20 which form a path or course along which
1 The examiner’s source for this definition is The American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition
(1992).
2 For example, Webster’s New World Dictionary of the
American Language, Second College Edition (The World Publishing
Co. 1970) similarly defines “track” as meaning “a course or line
of motion or action; route; way.”
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