Appeal No. 2004-1403
Application No. 09/908,224 Page 2
anticipation rejection of claim 71 is based on an erroneous claim
interpretation.
Appellants maintain that a projectile is an implicit part of
the claimed armor system. In support, appellants furnish an
alleged schematic illustration of comparative Example 31 and
Example 4 of their specification. Appellants argue, in effect,
that the illustrated systems are not congruent when claim 71 is
properly interpreted as including the illustrated projectile as
being part of the armor system required by claim 71.
During prosecution of a patent application, the terms in a
claim are given their broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the specification. In re Yamamoto, 740 F.2d
1569, 1571, 222 USPQ 934, 936 (Fed. Cir. 1984). Although no
limitations in the specification are normally imputed to the
claims being interpreted, see In re Paulsen, 30 F.3d at 1480, 31
USPQ2d at 1674, the specification can still be used to impart the
meaning of words in the claims, see In re Barr, 444 F.2d 588,
593, 170 USPQ 330, 335 (CCPA 1971).
Here, we determine that appellants’ claim construction
argument is directly contrary to the appellants’ own
1 Appellants’ acknowledge that comparative Example 3 follows
the teachings of the applied Harpell patent (Request, page 2 and
specification, paragraph bridging pages 9 and 10).
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007