Appeal 2007-0195
Application 10/895,515
interpreted by one of ordinary skill in the art.'" Phillips v. AWH Corp., 415
F.3d 1303, 1316, 75 USPQ2d 1321, 1329 (Fed. Cir. 2005) (en banc)
(quoting In re Am. Acad. of Sci. Tech. Ctr., 367 F.3d 1359, 1364, 70
USPQ2d 1827, 1830 (Fed. Cir. 2004)). In the absence of any indication in
Appellant's Specification that "receive" in claims 1 and 11 is to be
interpreted in any manner other than its ordinary and customary meaning
(FF10), we interpret "receive" in accordance with its ordinary and customary
definition as to let enter, admit, have room for, hold, or contain (FF9).
As the hand and wrist of the user of Liveoak's paddle are inserted into
aperture 16, defined in part by supports 22, 24 (FF3), they are "received" by
the element made up of converging supports 22, 24 in the sense that supports
22, 24 define aperture 16 and thus have room for, let enter, or admit the hand
and wrist. Actual contact is not required but, in any event, is satisfied by
Liveoak (FF5). We thus conclude that Liveoak's supports 22 and 24, relied
on by the Examiner as making up the linking element, are adapted to receive
the wrist of a user.
We turn next to the issue of whether Liveoak's supports 22, 24 are
adapted to set the hand and forearm of the user in a predetermined
alignment, as called for in claim 1. Appellant's argument that, because of
the space (aperture 16) in which Liveoak receives the wrist, a user can grip
Liveoak's handgrip 17 in a manner that causes the user's hand and forearm to
be in any of a number of random alignments, not in the claimed
predetermined alignment, is not persuasive of error in the Examiner's
anticipation rejection. Note, for example, that the same can reasonably be
said of Appellant's device, because a user is not prevented from positioning
the hand and wrist in positions not following the contour of hand support 9
9
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