Appeal No. 2002-1397
Application No. 09/310,800
could represent a statement of intended use, and read on the intermediate structures
taught by Tsutaki, which are ultimately divided into single-element heads operable for
reading from, and writing to, magnetic media. However, claim 21 recites that the
recording elements are operable with respect to “the multi-track medium.” The
preamble of claim 21 recites, “[a] multi-recording element magnetic head assembly
operable for at least one of reading from and writing to a multi-track medium moving
across the head assembly....” Although the “multi-track medium” is not a structural
limitation of the claim -- the recitation, instead, serves to further limit the recording
elements that are positively recited -- the body of the claim relies on the preamble for
antecedent.
A claim preamble has the import that the claim as a whole suggests for it. Bell
Communications Research, Inc., v. Vitalink Communications Corp., 55 F.3d 615, 620,
34 USPQ2d 1816, 1820 (Fed. Cir. 1995). In our view, the preamble of instant claim 21
is a limitation, rather than a statement of intended use. We thus hold that the scope of
the claim is limited to a multi-recording element magnetic head assembly operable for at
least one of reading from and writing to a multi-track medium moving across the head
assembly. For similar reasons, the remainder of the independent claims -- 1, 6, 27, and
292 -- are also limited to operable multi-recording element magnetic head assemblies.
2 Claim 29, a product-by-process claim that incorporates the method of claim 11, is independent
because it is in a different statutory class from claim 11. The subject matter of claim 19 is not understood,
and is subject to a new ground of rejection, infra.
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