Appeal No. 2005-0841
Application No. 08/230,083
claim 1, and made minor amendments to the remaining claims to
obtain the allowance of the original application. Since reissue
claims 14 and 16 do not include the limitations from original
application claims 2 and 12 which were relied on by the appellant
to obtain the patent, the broadened aspects of claims 14 and 16
arguably relate to surrendered subject matter. The prosecution
history of the patent, however, contains no evidence that the
appellant ever considered the limitations in original application
claims 2 and 12 to embody critical or exclusively defining elements
of the invention. Hence, on the record before us, the broadened
aspects of reissue claims 14 and 16 relate to surrendered subject
matter only in a limited sense. Conceivably, these broadened
aspects merely set the limits of the surrendered subject matter at
the scope of the original application claims which were canceled or
amended.
Reissue claim 14 includes the limitation which reads “the
second clip connection comprising a second springy tongue integral
with the surrounding wall.” The underlying specification indicates
that this limitation, which was not recited in any of the original
application claims, relates to a significant aspect of the
appellant’s invention. Moreover, the prior art of record does not
anticipate, and would not have suggested, the subject matter
recited in claim 14 due to the presence of such limitation.
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