Appeal No. 2006-1753
Application No. 09/732,037
“describes the organization, produce [sic] or service being provided, equipment
and other requirements” [request, pages 4 and 5]. According to appellants, a
“specification coordinator” is not a message originator that uses a database to
determine which users have acknowledged electronic notifications, but rather
receives conventional specification change notifications, completes a
specification change awareness record, and provides paper copies of the change
awareness record to concerned individuals within an organization [request, page
5].
During patent examination, the pending claims must be “given their
broadest reasonable interpretation consistent with the specification.” In re Hyatt,
211 F.3d 1367, 1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000). In our view,
restricting the interpretation of “specification” and “specification coordinator” to
appellants’ narrower constructions noted in the request is tantamount to
impermissibly importing limitations from the specification into the claims. See
Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1323, 75 USPQ2d 1321, 1334 (Fed. Cir.
2005) (“[A]lthough the specification often describes very specific embodiments of
the invention, we have repeatedly warned against confining the claims to those
embodiments...[C]laims may embrace ‘different subject matter than is illustrated
in the specific embodiments in the specification’” (citations omitted). We
therefore decline to adopt appellants’ construction of the terms. In short, we find
no error in our determination that the examiner’s construction of “specification”
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