Appeal No. 2002-2182
Application No. 09/223,565
468 U.S. 1228 (1984); W.L. Gore and Associates, Inc. v. Garlock,
Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1554, 220 USPQ 303, 313 (Fed. Cir. 1983),
cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984).
With respect to representative independent claim 1, the
Examiner indicates (Answer, pages 3 and 4) how the various
limitations are read on the disclosure of Lemay. In particular,
the Examiner directs attention to pages 121-123 and 168-170 of
Lemay along with the accompanying illustrations in Figures 8.3-8.6
and 9.15-9.17.
At the outset, we note that it is a basic tenet of patent law
that claims are to be given their broadest reasonable
interpretation consistent with the description in the
specification. With this in mind, we have reviewed Appellants’
specification for guidance as to the proper interpretation of the
claim language and we find little enlightenment as to how to
properly interpret the first, second, and third “display portion”
language of representative claim 1. Further adding to this
difficulty is the fact that Appellants’ arguments in the Briefs do
not refer to any specific portion of their specification or drawing
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007