Appeal No. 2006-1908 Page 5
Application No. 10/371,161
receptacle to hold food or water for animals. One of ordinary skill in the art would
not have understood the appellant to have intended this meaning of trough in the
context of a product delivery chute assembly. The common ordinary meaning of
“trough” as used in the context of industrial or commercial applications is “any of
various containers used for some domestic or industrial purpose: as (1): a bowl,
tank, or basin in which something is prepared or processed (as by kneading,
washing, brewing, or tanning)….” Webster’s Third International Dictionary,
unabridged, G. & C. Merriam Co., 1971, p. 2453. As such, we find that the
broadest reasonable interpretation of “trough” in light of the specification as it
would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art does not require it to be an
elongated structure.
We find that the storage cups (101) of Bacon have walls that project
inwardly and extend down the sidewalls of the chute (102). (Bacon, Figure 1a).
Each storage cup (101) necessarily has walls that project inwardly to form the cup,
and the walls extend down the sidewalls of the chute as evidenced by Bacon’s
description, “[T]he slope of the back wall of each cup 101 [matches] the slope of
the annular wall of the collar 102.” (Bacon, col. 5, lines 27-28). We also find that
the storage cups (101) of Bacon have walls along which batches travel after being
delivered thereto by the weigher (W). In particular, Bacon discloses that the cup
(101)/collar (102) combination form a part of the product flow path. (Bacon, col.
5, lines 29-30). As such, we find that Bacon discloses a chute having a plurality of
troughs extending down the sidewall of the chute and along which batches travel
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