Appeal No. 2006- 1669
Application No. 10/476,257
of Lavelle and the rejection of claim 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Allen. The appellant requests reconsideration only of that
portion of our decision affirming the rejections under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102(b) and
103(a).
In the request, the appellant persists in his untenable position that the claim
term “winglet” is by definition a fixed upturned tip on a wing. We explained on
pages 5 and 6 of our decision the basis for our conclusion that the term “winglet”
would not have been understood by one of ordinary skill in the art as requiring a
fixed mounting to the wing. The use of the term “winglet” in the Allen, Daude and
Brix patents, all within the field of appellant’s invention, in the context of a
structure that is moveable relative to the wing on which it is mounted clearly
evidences that this term was not construed as narrowly as appellant urges. This is
not a case, as appellant would have us believe, where the Allen patent has uniquely
used the term “winglet” in a manner inconsistent with an established meaning
within the art.
The appellant’s argument (request, p. 4) that this panel’s conclusion
(decision, p. 3) that one of ordinary skill in the art would infer from the appellant’s
specification in its entirety that the winglet 12 discussed therein is fixed, in
reversing the examiner’s written description rejection of claims 24 and 25 under 35
U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, is inconsistent with our refusal to read a “fixed”
limitation into the claim term “winglet” is not well taken. While it is true that the
claims do not stand alone and must be read in view of the specification, of which
they are a part (see Phillipps v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1315, 75 USPQ2d
2
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