Appeal No. 2002-2176 Page 5
Application No. 08/948,931
1. CLAIM CONSTRUCTION
"Analysis begins with a key legal question -- what is the invention claimed?"
Panduit Corp. v. Dennison Mfg. Co., 810 F.2d 1561, 1567, 1 USPQ2d 1593, 1597 (Fed.
Cir. 1987). In answering the question, "[c]laims are not interpreted in a vacuum, but are
part of and are read in light of the specification." Slimfold Mfg. Co. v. Kinkead Indus.,
Inc., 810 F.2d 1113, 1116, 1 USPQ2d 1563, 1566 (Fed. Cir. 1987) (citing Hybritech Inc.
v. Monoclonal Anti-bodies, Inc., 802 F.2d 1367, 1385, 231 USPQ 81, 94-95 (Fed. Cir.
1986); In re Mattison, 509 F.2d 563, 565, 184 USPQ 484, 486 (CCPA 1975)).
Here, claim 1 recites in pertinent part the following limitations: "detecting a virus
using an alternate path to the storage medium by detecting alteration of the
correspondence between logical requests for access to the virus target structure and
the corresponding controller interface parameters." Claims 18 and 31 include similar
limitations.
The appellants' specification describes the "detecting a virus" as follows.
One search method includes an attempted target reading step 412, an
alternate target reading step 414, and a data comparing step 416. During
the attempted target reading step 412, the virus detector 312 reads the
Master Boot Record or other target using the native BIOS 304 and/or the
operating system 302. During the alternate target reading step 414, the
virus detector 312 uses the detector's private BIOS 314 to read the same
target. The data resulting from the two reads in then compared during the
step 416.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007