Appeal No. 2004-1006
Application 10/142,485
The dispute with respect to the third clause of appealed claim 8, “the bore being tapered
and narrowing only from a diameter adjacent the internal threads to a smaller diameter at the
second end” (emphasis supplied), involves the italicized language used by appellant to define the
locus of a diameter in the center bore relative to the internal threads, from which the center bore
is “tapered and narrowing only” to the second end of the choke tube. Appellant does not define
the term “adjacent to” in the context of this claim clause in the written description in the
specification per se, and in now canceled original claim 1 states the clause as “the bore being
tapered and narrowing only from a diameter at the first end to a smaller diameter at the second
end” (emphasis supplied). We find that appellant does disclose in the written description in the
specification that “[t]he choke has an internal diameter that tapers inwardly as it progresses from
the end of the barrel to the end of the choke” (page 2, lines 3-5, emphasis supplied; see also page
2, lines 10-12, and page 3, lines 4-6, 11-14 and 17-19). Upon considering the language of
appealed claim 8 as a whole in these respects, we find no requirement that the entire length of the
“internal threads” of the claimed choke tube must be “threadably engaged” with all of the
external threads on “an outside diameter of the discharge end of the firearm barrel,” that is, there
can be a shorter length of threads on the barrel than inside the choke tube in which instance, the
“tapering and narrowing” would begin at a point in the center bore of the choke tube after the end
of the barrel.
In amending the subject clause by replacing the words “at the first end,” in canceled claim
1, with the words “adjacent the internal threads” in “claim 12” in the amendment filed December
2, 2002 (Paper No. 6), now claim 8 (see above note 2), appellant states that “Applicant’s device
is . . . manufactured by cutting the internal threads in a bore of constant diameter, and thence
tapering the bore to a narrower diameter downstream of the threads” (page 3). In the reply brief
(pages 4-5; emphasis supplied), appellant points to specification Fig. 3 as establishing that “the
tapering of bore 36 begins at the end of internal threads 36” in contrast to the separated loci of
the end of internal threads 36 and lead line 24 of Ferhat Fig. 2, which the examiner considers to
be “close enough” to be “adjacent to” (answer, pages 5-6).
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