Appeal No. 2004-0837
Application No. 09/778,481
[recited in claims 1, 5 and 13] does [sic., do] not appear to be
present in the originally filed specification...”
As the court stated in In re Kaslow, 707 F.2d 1366, 1375,
217 USPQ 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 1983):
The test for determining compliance with the written
description requirement is whether the disclosure of
the application as originally filed reasonably conveys
to the artisan that the inventor had possession at that
time of the later claimed subject matter, rather than
the presence or absence of literal support in the
specification for the claimed language. The content of
the drawings may also be considered in determining
compliance with the written description requirement.
(Emphasis added.)
In the present case, there is no dispute that “[t]he drawings
that accompany the written description show... a sensor device 40
spaced away from a sheave.” Compare the Brief, page 8, with the
Answer in its entirety. This sensor device “is positioned
relative to the sheaves to provide information regarding the
condition of a portion of the rope that is most likely to wear
over time” and is selected from, inter alia, those utilizing
magnetic flux (requiring a space between a sensor device and an
elevator rope on a sheave) and electric resistance measurement
techniques. See the specification, pages 2 and 4, together with
Hirama in its entirety. Thus, we concur with the appellants that
“[t]he figures taken with the written description [in the
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