Appeal No. 2006-2181
Application No. 10/878,586
specification reasonably conveys to one of ordinary skill in the
art that the inventor had possession of the claimed subject
matter at the time of filing the application. In re Kaslow,
707 F.2d 1366, 1375, 217 USPQ 1089, 1096 (Fed. Cir. 1983). In
the present case, the examiner properly finds that appellants'
original specification utterly fails to convey the concept of a
ratio of a dimension of a contact region to a separation
distance between adjacent contact regions. To be sure, as
emphasized by appellants, the specification provides two
examples where such a ratio can be calculated from the
dimensions given to be 10:1 and 15:1. However, the fact that a
ratio can be gleaned from the disclosure of two numerical values
hardly qualifies as a conveyance to one of ordinary skill in the
art that the concept of a ratio of a dimension of the contact
region to a separation distance between adjacent contact regions
was in possession of the present inventors at the time of filing
the subject application. Our review of the original
specification finds no mention of, or significance attached to,
the concept of the recited ratio. Appellants' invention is
directed to using a tapered nickel contact formed over each of
the contact regions to allow for the regions to be closer
together than in the prior art.
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