Appeal No. 2003-0161
Application No. 09/578,575
The server disclosed in the appellants’ specification
contains molded thermoplastic polymer freezer panels (36,
figures 2-4) filled with a cooling agent such as saline solution
(water containing a small amount of sodium chloride)3 that has
been frozen in a freezer (specification, page 2, lines 25-26).
Thus, when we give the “without ice or electricity” in the
appellants’ claims 17 and 18 its broadest reasonable
interpretation in view of the specification, we construe it as
excluding only direct contact by ice of the material being
cooled, and direct use of electricity in the server. We
interpret the term as including the appellants’ use of ice in the
form of frozen saline solution contained in molded polymer
freezer panels, and including the appellants’ use of electricity
provided to a freezer having therein freezer panels which have
been removed from the server.
The examiner argues that it would have been “obvious to
modify Christiansen so that the food items therein are chilled
without ice or electricity, in view of Cook et al, for the
purpose of making it easier and more convenient for consumers to
use the server” (final rejection mailed February 8, 2002,
3 See Hackh’s Chemical Dictionary 594 (Julius Grant, ed.,
McGraw-Hill 4th ed. 1969).
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