Appeal No. 2003-0985
Application No. 09/221,665
We agree with the examiner to the extent that the examiner may hold that the
scope of a claim cannot be narrowed by reading disclosed limitations into the claim.
For example, details of the “assured pipeline” shown in instant Figure 5A, and
described at page 25 et seq. of the specification, are exemplary, rather than definitional,
and are not to be read into the claims. However, the above-noted page 9 section of the
specification informs as to what an “assured pipeline” is -- i.e., what an assured pipeline
requires for its establishment -- and thus aids us in ascertaining the meaning of the
term. The relevant section may set forth a special meaning attributed by appellants,
since it appears in the “Summary of the Invention” section of the disclosure. See In re
Paulsen, 30 F.3d 1475, 1480, 31 USPQ2d 1671, 1674 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (repeating the
principle that where an inventor chooses to be his own lexicographer and gives terms
uncommon meanings, he must set out the uncommon definition in the patent
disclosure); Beachcombers Int’l, Inc. v. WildeWood Creative Prods., Inc., 31 F.3d 1154,
1158, 31 USPQ2d 1653, 1656 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (“As we have repeatedly said, a
patentee can be his own lexicographer provided the patentee's definition, to the extent
it differs from the conventional definition, is clearly set forth in the specification.”).
In any event, the examiner has not provided evidence that the relevant term, as
understood by the artisan at the time of invention, had any meaning different from that
expressed in the instant specification. We have, instead, the bare assertion that the
firewall servers of Aziz establish assured pipelines, even though the reference does not
say so. Nor does the reference describe placing processes within domains, assigning
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