Appeal No. 2002-2319 Page 6
Application No. 09/129,197
light of the teachings of the prior art and of the particular application disclosure as it
would be interpreted by one possessing the ordinary level of skill in the pertinent art. Id.
We thus turn to appellant’s specification to determine whether one of ordinary
skill in the art would interpret claim 19 as being directed to the sling alone or to the
combination of the sling and an arm of a patient. Appellant’s specification informs us,
for example, on page 1, in lines 12-13, that the “invention relates to slings for optionally
supporting a person’s left or right arm” and, on page 2, in lines 14-15, that “[t]he present
invention provides a simple, practical and lightweight arm sling.” We thus conclude
from appellant’s underlying disclosure that the claimed invention is directed to the sling
and not to a combination of an arm of a patient (or a patient) and the sling. This is also
consistent with appellant’s brief wherein appellant acknowledges that “the human body,
or parts thereof, cannot be claimed” and confirms that “claim 19 does not claim body
parts, it only refers to them” (page 6) and emphasizes that “the body parts [referred to
in claim 19] do not constitute an ‘integral component’ of the claim, but only points of
reference for defining the structure of the sling when it supports an arm” (page 7).
In short, consistent with appellant’s underlying disclosure and arguments in the
brief, we interpret claim 19 as being directed solely to a sling, with the references to the
patient’s body parts defining the environment in which the sling is to be used.
Therefore, in our view, the examiner’s position that the reference to body parts in claim
19 renders the claim indefinite is not well founded.
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