Appeal No. 2007-0999
Application No. 10/600,280
CLAIM INTERPRETATION
Claim 1
The claimed decontamination device comprises three elements:
1) housing; 2) absorbent pad; and 3) “structure for removably engaging said
housing to a portion of said medical apparatus.” We focus our attention on
the latter structure because its interpretation is at issue in this appeal.
Because the specification does not provide a definition of “removably
engaging,” we give the words their “ordinary and customary meaning” in the
context of the specification. See Vitronics Corp. v. Conceptronic, Inc.,
90 F.3d 1576, 1582, 39 USPQ2d 1573, 1576 (Fed. Cir. 1996); Phillips v.
AWH Corp., 415 F.3d 1303, 1313, 75 USPQ2d 1321, 1326 (Fed. Cir. 2005).
We refer to a general purpose dictionary to determine the widely accepted
meaning of the words. See Phillips, 415 F.3d at 1314, 75 USPQ2d at 1327.
When the term “engage” is used in a mechanical context – the proper
context in view of the specification – it is defined to mean “[t]o cause (gears
or like) to become interlocked; interlock with.”2 The term “interlock”
means “to engage or interlace one with another” and “to fit into each
other.”3 The structure is for “removably engaging” the device housing to the
medical apparatus. Thus, we interpret the phrase “structure for removably
engaging said housing to a portion of said medical apparatus” to mean that
the device housing fits into a portion of the medical apparatus. The medical
apparatus is capable of being removed from, or disengaged from
2 The Random House Dictionary 438 (1982).
3 Id. at 695.
4
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