Appeal No. 2006-0650 Page 3
Application No. 10/007,613
the words of a claim “are generally given their ordinary and customary meaning.”
Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc., 90 F.3d 1576, 1582, 39 USPQ2d 1573, 1576
(Fed. Cir. 1996). The “ordinary and customary meaning of a claim term is the meaning
that the term would have to a person of ordinary skill in the art in question at the time of
the invention, i.e., as of the effective filing date of the patent application.” Phillips v.
AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1313, 75 USPQ2d 1321, 1326 (Fed. Cir. 2005). “[A]
person of ordinary skill in the art is deemed to read the claim term not only in the
context of the particular claim in which the disputed term appears, but in the context of
the entire patent, including the specification.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1313, 75 USPQ2d at
1326. “In some cases, the ordinary meaning of claim language as understood by a
person of skill in the art may be readily apparent even to lay judges, and claim
construction in such cases involves little more than the application of the widely
accepted meaning of commonly understood words … In such circumstances, general
purpose dictionaries may be helpful.” Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1314, 75 USPQ2d at 1327.
The ordinary and customary usage of the words in the “wherein clause” leads us
to its proper construction. We refer to a dictionary for the meaning of “characterized
by,” since the latter is not defined in the specification. The ordinary meaning of the term
“characterize” is “to describe the character or quality of.” Webster’s New Collegiate
Dictionary, 1976. Thus, the recited condition of “from about 40°C to about 60°C”
describes the character of the article and the system in which it is placed. Accordingly,
we can construe the phrase in these claims to unambiguously mean that the system,
and article contained in it, are brought to a temperature within the recited range. This
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