Appeal No. 2006-0551 Παγε 7
Application No. 10/182,904
implicitly requires such a narrow construction. See Altiris Inc. v. Symantec Corp., 318
F.3d 1363, 1369-70, 65 USPQ2d 1865, 1869 (Fed. Cir. 2003).
Appellants' claim 1 does not include any language requiring that, as a matter of
logic or grammar, the recited steps be performed in any particular sequence. Moreover,
there is nothing in the "forming" and "positioning" steps which would indicate to one of
ordinary skill in the art that the "forming" step must inherently be performed prior to the
"positioning" step rather than, for example, at the same time as the "forming" step. On
the contrary, one of ordinary skill in the art would understand that, as evidenced by
Westre, a composite reinforcement member, such as composite layer 15 of Westre's
Figure 5 hybrid laminate, can be positioned on a layer of a laminated member (bottom
foil layer 10, first composite layer 15 and second foil layer 10) at the same time that it is
being formed from a plurality of layers.
We next look to the rest of appellants' specification to determine whether it
requires that the step of forming the composite reinforcement member must be
performed before the step of positioning the composite reinforcement member on a
layer of the laminated member. It is apparent from a reading of the discussion on pages
1 and 2 of appellants' specification that the improvement of appellants' inventive method
and laminated member over the prior art illustrated in Figure 1 is that, "instead of
providing a plurality of reinforcement members, each being placed between different
adjacent layers of the laminated member, only the single composite reinforcement
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