Appeal 2007-0537
Application 10/102,902
5. “Context-adaptive scaling” (claim 1) and “context-adaptive
descriptor scaling” (claim 13) are not defined in the Specification. Thus, we
define these terms to mean weighting the descriptors (or features) in view of
their surroundings. (See Websters 283 (“context” means “the interrelated
conditions in which something exists”) & 55 (“adaptation,” the noun for the
adjective “adaptive,” means “adjustment to environmental conditions”).)
6. Our definition of “context-adaptive scaling” and “context-adaptive
descriptor scaling” comports with Appellants’ statement that such scaling
“helps to allow the user to tune the weights of the various feature
components [or descriptors] based on examples relevant to the particular
context under investigation.” (Spec. 17.)
7. Appellants have not limited “context-adaptive scaling” to any
particular method of weighting the descriptors, or features, in view of their
surroundings (see, e.g., claim 1), and thus the term includes “k-values
scaling,” used to give weight to a chemical environment (see FF 18).
8. Appellants’ extensive use of “may” throughout their Specification
does not limit the scope of their claims, i.e., does not require us to narrow
our claim interpretation (see, e.g., Spec. passim); neither do their “preferred
embodiments.” (See Spec. 76 (“the invention can be practiced with
modification”).)
The Prior Art
9. Cornilescu teaches: “Chemical shifts of backbone atoms in
proteins are exquisitely sensitive to local conformation, and homologous
proteins show quite similar patterns of secondary chemical shifts. The
inverse of this relation is used to search a database for triplets of adjacent
residues with secondary chemical shifts and sequence similarity which
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