Appeal No. 2003-0435
Application No. 09/263,921
We must first determine the scope of the claim. Claims will be given their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification, limitations
appearing in the specification will not be read into the claims. In re Etter 756
F.2d 852, 858, 225 USPQ 1, 5 (Fed. Cir. 1985). In analyzing the scope of the
claim, office personnel must rely on the appellant’s disclosure to properly
determine the meaning of the terms used in the claims. Markman v Westview
Instruments, 52 F3d 967, 980, 34 USPQ2d 1384 (1996). “[I]nterpreting what is
meant by a word in a claim ‘is not to be confused with adding an extraneous
limitation appearing in the specification, which is improper.’” (emphasis original)
In re Cruciferous Sprout Litigation, 301 F.3d 1343, 1348, 64 USPQ2d 1202,
1205, (Fed. Cir. 2002) (citing Intervet America Inc v. Kee-Vet Laboratories
Inc. 12 USPQ2d 1474, 1476 (Fed. Cir. 1989)).
Claims 1-2, 4-6, 8-10 and 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Greenfield et al. in view of applicant’s admitted prior art
and Wang et al. Appellant agues in the paragraph bridging pages 3 and 4 of the
brief that the claimed feature of “averaging the best match candidates to produce
said first block” is distinguishable over the combination of Greenfield et al. and
Wang.
Before considering the teachings of the prior art we first determine the
scope of the independent claims. We find that claims 1 and 5 include the
limitation of a “locating a first block in a first picture which corresponds to a
4
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