Appeal No. 2005-2211 Παγε 5
Application No. 10/715,002
breadth, not indefiniteness. Just because a claim is broad does not mean that it is
indefinite. See In re Johnson, 558 F.2d 1008, 1016 n.17, 194 USPQ 187, 194 n.17
(CCPA 1977); In re Miller, 441 F.2d 689, 693, 169 USPQ 597, 600 (CCPA 1971); In re
Gardner, 427 F.2d 786, 788, 166 USPQ 138, 140 (CCPA 1970) and Ex parte
Scherberich, 201 USPQ 397, 398 (Bd. App. 1977). As the examiner has not cogently
explained, and it is not apparent to us, why this language renders the claim indefinite as
opposed to merely broad, we cannot sustain the rejection.
With regard to claims 7, 9, 15, 16 and 21, and claims 8, 10-14, 17-20 and 28-31
depending therefrom2, the basis of the examiner's indefiniteness rejection is that no
"parallelogram motion" as recited in the claims is disclosed in appellant's specification
and that, in essence, the claims are misdescriptive of the invention. The examiner's
criticism of the claims appears to be that appellant does not disclose top and bottom
nose portions or sections which are in the form of a closed parallelogram and, as such,
there can be no parallelogram motion.
The terminology "parallelogram motion" is used in appellant's specification at
least on pages 3, 4, 7 and 8 and is described, on page 3, in lines 3-5, as a motion "that
2 While claims 23-26 also depend from the claims at issue, the examiner inexplicably did not
include these claims in the rejection.
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