Appeal No. 2004-1309
Application No. 09/410,978
at a shopping location to obtain selected goods or services. To the
contrary, it is readily apparent that the DeLorme, et al. system pertains to
defining a trip itinerary without regard to the order of obtaining selected
goods or services along the trip and certainly not with respect to a function
of at least one user profile.
The Examiner responds to these arguments, on page 15 of the answer
stating
[I]t appears that Appellant misinterprets the clear and unmistakable
teachings of the applied references, and proceeds to apply an improper
interpretation of the applied references as the basis for the Examiner’s
rejection. Claims 1 and 30 pertain to the use of the profile as a source of
input information that facilitates the narrowing of the information retrieved,
i.e. the itinerary. Bull and Delorme teach the claimed user profile through-
out the referenced document.
Further, the examiner argues “ the Bull reference that was relied upon for the
user profile and itinerary limitations and the DeLorme reference applied for the
physical shopping limitation (see paper number 12) nevertheless DeLorme
additionally discloses individual user profiles as input for subsequent
determination of itineraries throughout the referenced document.”
We are not convinced by the examiner’s claim interpretation and
reasoning. Claims will be given their broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the specification, limitations appearing in the specification will not
be read into the claims. In re Etter 756 F.2d 852, 858, 225 USPQ 1, 5 (Fed. Cir.
1985). “[I]nterpreting what is meant by a word in a claim ‘is not to be confused
with adding an extraneous limitation appearing in the specification, which is
improper.’” (emphasis original) In re Cruciferous Sprout Litigation, 301 F.3d
1343, 1348, 64 USPQ2d 1202, 1205, (Fed. Cir. 2002) (citing Intervet America
4
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