Appeal No. 2005-0171
Application No. 10/064,380
weight since such language appears only in the claim preamble and
merely recites the intended use of a structure. Contrary to the
Examiner’s contention that the claim preambles merely recite
intended use, the data sequence limitations appearing in the
preambles of claims 32 and 72 are directly tied to the data
sequence detecting and preamble identifying features recited in the
body of the claims and, as discussed supra, establish conditions
under which these functions must operate. As pointed out by
Appellants (Brief, page 39), the sole reason for the claimed
detecting and identifying limitations in the body of claims 32 and
72 is because of the need to process data sequences which could
possibly contain false-sync sequences. Our reviewing court has
stated in Bell Communications Research, Inc. V. Vitalink
Communications Corp., 55 F.3d 615, 620, 34 USPQ2d 1816, 1820 (Fed.
Cir. 1995) that:
[A] claim preamble has the import that the claim as a whole
suggests for it. In other words, when the claim drafter
chooses to use both the preamble and the body to define the
subject matter of the claimed invention, the invention is so
defined.
Each of claims 32 and 72 refers in the body of the claim to
the detecting of a data sequence and the identifying of a preamble
of the data sequence. We thus regard the preamble recitations
which describe the contents of the data sequence as providing
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