Ex parte WHITMAN (2003-1404) Paper 23
Application No. 09/532,230 Page 4
special definition must be stated with reasonable clarity, deliberateness, and precision. Id.,
30 F.3d at 1480, 31 USPQ2d at 1674.
[13] The examiner does not provide a definition for "search phrase".
[14] The Bowman patent does not contain the word "phrase" and thus provides no guidance regarding
what the art understands "search phrase" to mean.
[15] Whitman does not cite a definition for "search phrase" beyond a parenthetical definition of
"phrase" in the specification (Paper 1 at 7:11-12), where it means "a combination of two or more
terms".
[16] A combination of two or more terms does not, in itself, require any lexical ordering between the
terms.
[17] The specification, however, provides as examples of search phrases only lexically ordered sets of
terms, such as book titles and authors' names (Paper 1, Fig. 1, table 137).
[18] Moreover, the Summary of the Invention (Paper 1 at 2) distinguishes between Bowman's
suggestion of "related query terms[, which] do not always assist the user in refining the search
query", and Whitman's suggestion of "previously-submitted, [sic] related search phrases".
[19] A set of terms will refine a search more than a single term and a lexically ordered set of terms (a
search phrase) will refine the search still more.
[20] Consequently, the broadest reasonable construction of the contested limitation "search phrase"
when construed in light of the specification requires a lexically ordered set of terms derived from
a prior search query.
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