Appeal No. 2006-3231
Application No. 09/955,691
v. Applied Digital Data Systems, Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed.
Cir. 1984).
Further, as pointed out by our reviewing court, we must first determine the scope of
the claim. “[T]he name of the game is the claim.” In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362,
1369, 47 USPQ2d 1523, 1529 (Fed. Cir. 1998). Therefore, we look to the limitations as
recited in independent claim 1 and find that the claim requires “a meter coupled to the
tuner to record a media link embedded in the program tuned by the tuner.” [Emphasis
added.] To properly interpret this limitation, we first look to Appellants’ specification
and then to the ordinary meaning for a reasonable interpretation in light of Appellants’
disclosure and the express claim language.
Appellants argue that the Examiner’s interpretation of “media link” in the
independent claim 11 is unreasonable in light of the express definition in the specification
and that the application of the ancillary codes of Thomas is unreasonable in light of the
express definition. (Br. 11-20). We do not agree with Appellants. Appellants rely on the
text at page 1, line 17 – page 2, line 4 of the specification which states that “as used
herein, media links include URLs . . . .” We cannot agree with Appellants that this
language establishes an express definition of “‘media link’ to be any link that links a
content recipient to additional content.” We find that a URL is a Universal Resource
Locator and that the resource located does not always have content. The URL may
forward the user to another URL, or not be used. We find no limitation in the express
language of the claim that necessarily requires there to be content associated with the
media link. Additionally, we do not find that the “media link” in independent claim 1 is
more than a label or non-functional descriptive material since it is not used as a “link” to
do any claimed function. Therefore, we find that the Examiner has not been
unreasonable in interpreting the claim language and in relying upon the ancillary codes of
Thomas to reject independent claim 1.
1 Here, we also question whether the “program identifier” of independent claim 1 is a
separate element of the detection apparatus as structured in the claim limitations or
whether this is another piece of information recorded. No prior discussion of this
element has clarified this limitation.
4
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