Appeal 2007-0677
Application 10/708,677
1 PRINCIPLES OF LAW
2 Office personnel must rely on Appellants’ disclosure to properly
3 determine the meaning of the terms used in the claims. Markman v.
4 Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F3d 967, 980, 34 USPQ2d 1321, 1330 (Fed.
5 Cir. 1995). “[I]nterpreting what is meant by a word in a claim ‘is not to be
6 confused with adding an extraneous limitation appearing in the specification,
7 which is improper.’” (emphasis original) In re Cruciferous Sprout
8 Litigation, 301 F.3d 1343, 1348, 64 USPQ2d 1202, 1205, (Fed. Cir. 2002)
9 (citing Intervet America Inc v. Kee-Vet Laboratories Inc., 12 USPQ2d 1474,
10 1476 (Fed. Cir. 1989). It is the burden of the Examiner to establish why one
11 having ordinary skill in the art would have been led to the claimed invention
12 by the express teachings or suggestions found in the prior art, or by the
13 implications contained in such teachings or suggestions. In re Sernaker, 702
14 F.2d 989, 995, 217 USPQ 1, 6 (Fed. Cir. 1983).
15
16 ANALYSIS
17 Independent claim 1 recites “determining a predicted position of a
18 trailer based upon the current position and the steering wheel alignment; and
19 displaying within the vehicle, the current position and the predicted position
20 of the trailer relative to the vehicle.” Independent claim 12 includes similar
21 limitations. Independent claim 21 recites “a controller coupled to the trailer
22 position signal display, and steering wheel angle sensor, said controller
23 displaying a predicted path of the trailer in response to the position signal.”
24 Thus, each of the independent claims recites displaying a predicted position
25 or path of the trailer and that the predicted position is calculated based upon
6
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Last modified: September 9, 2013