Appeal No. 2004-1602
Application No. 09/954,766
bellcrank arm 270 (id.). Appellants submit that this one-piece
construction makes it impossible to have an obtuse angle in the
arm of Rodriguez, and the relatively short length of the one-piece
bellcrank arm results in a snubber contacting the coil on the side,
not the top as in appellants’ invention (Brief, pages 4-5 and 7).
These arguments are not persuasive. As correctly construed by
the examiner (Answer, page 7), the term “section” as recited in
claim 1 on appeal does not limit the snubber arm to any number of
pieces since even a one-piece construction could have multiple
sections. See In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d 1023,
1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997)(“the PTO applies to the verbiage of the
proposed claims the broadest reasonable meaning of the words in
their ordinary usage as they would be understood by one of ordinary
skill in the art,” when read in light of the specification).
Appellants’ specification does not define “sections” as separate
pieces (see the specification, pages 7 and 9). Giving the ordinary
meaning to the word “section,” which is “[a] part or piece of
something,” there is no limitation that each section must be a
separate piece.1 In other words, appellants are arguing
1See Webster’s II, New Riverside University Dictionary, p.
1055, The Riverside Publishing Co., 1984 (a copy of this page is
attached to this decision).
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