Appeal No. 2004-0189 Page 7
Application No. 09/782,782
In the present case, we have reviewed the appellants' disclosure to help us
determine the meaning of the above-noted terminology from claims 1 and 18. That
review has revealed that the appellants' specification provides at page 9 that the term
"about," as used herein in connection with one or more numbers or numerical
ranges, should be understood to refer to all such numbers, including all numbers in a
range.
However, this definition does not provide a sufficient guideline defining the
terminology "about" as used in the claims under appeal. For example, if this definition
connotes that "greater than about 56" refers only to numbers greater than 56 then the
term "about" becomes meaningless. If this definition is meant to indicate that "greater
than about 56" refers to all numbers greater than 56 and some numbers less than 56
then the definition does not clearly set forth the lower limit. Furthermore, there are no
guidelines that would be implicit to one skilled in the art defining the term "about" as
used in the terminology "greater than about 56 Shore D" that would enable one skilled in
the art to ascertain what is meant by "about." For example, one cannot ascertain if a
Shore D hardness of 53 is "greater than about 56." This is especially true since
(1) dependent claim 2 further requires the outer cover layer to have a material hardness
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007