Appeal No. 2006-0440
Application No. 10/291,933
as our own and add the following comments primarily for
emphasis.2
It is well settled that the United States Patent and
Trademark Office (PTO) is obligated to give disputed claim terms
their broadest reasonable interpretation, taking into account
any enlightenment by way of definitions or otherwise found in
the specification. In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320, 1324, 72 USPQ2d
1209, 1211 (Fed. Cir. 2004)(“[T]he PTO gives a disputed claim
term its broadest reasonable interpretation during patent
prosecution.”); In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054, 44 USPQ2d
1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997) (“[T]he 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 re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13
USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989)(“During patent examination
the pending claims must be interpreted as broadly as their terms
reasonably allow.”).
2 The appellants present arguments for separate
patentability of the claims as follows: (i) claims 1-9; (ii)
claim 17; and (iii) claim 18. (Substitute appeal brief at 3-8.)
We select claim 1 as representative of claims 1-9 and,
accordingly, confine our discussion of the rejection to claims
1, 17, and 18. 37 CFR § 41.37(c)(vii)(2005)(effective September
13, 2004).
4
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