Appeal No. 2003-0646
Application No. 09/250,154
request to a network access center 9 via the Internet 7. See
page 1 of the Reply Brief.
We note that Appellants’ claim 4 recites “first controlling
means for receiving a first search request from one of a
plurality of client terminals and issuing a data search request
to a network access center connected to the Internet in order to
search and collect desired data designated in said first search
request from one of a plurality of Web servers connected to the
Internet.” See Appellants’ claim 4.
Our reviewing court has stated in In re Donaldson Co., Inc.,
16 F.3d 1189, 1193, 29 USPQ2d 1845, 1848 (Fed. Cir. 1994) that
the “plain and unambiguous meaning of paragraph six is that one
construing means-plus-function language in a claim must look to
the specification and interpret that language in light of the
corresponding structure, material, or acts described therein, and
equivalents thereof, to the extent that the specification
provides such disclosure.”
We find that “first controlling means” corresponds to the
structure searching server 1 shown in Figure 1 of Appellants’
disclosure. The function provided by this structure is to one,
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