Appeal 2007-4310 Application 10/950,830 specification that indicates that the single scrim layer limitation should be read out of the claims as a grammatical accident or as an insubstantial superfluity. Moreover, the Examiner has not indicated that Mangum describes or suggests skid-resistant pads having only a single layer of scrim. Instead, the Examiner argues that the claims read on multi-scrim skid- resistant pads. The Examiner does not rely on Sobonya or Jupina for teachings or suggestions of single-scrim skid-resistant pads. Accordingly, the rejections of claims 18 and 19 under § 103(a) are REVERSED. We consider next the "coverage" limitations in the independent claims, which are reproduced here for convenient reference (emphasis added): Claims 1 and 19 require that the foamed latex resin be "discontinuous on the scrim, such that at least a portion of the scrim fibers is visible on the second major surface"; whereas Claim 18 requires that the foamed latex resin provide "discontinuous coverage of the scrim fibers on the second major surface." The difference in wording implies that resin that is "discontinuous on the scrim" is distributed differently from resin that is "discontinuous on the scrim fibers." CAE Screen Plates, Inc. v. Heinrich Fiedler GMBH & Co. KG, 224 F.3d 1308, 1317, 55 USPQ2d 1804, 1810 (Fed. Cir. 2000) ("In the absence of any evidence to the contrary, we must presume that the use of these different terms in the claims connotes different meanings.") (citation omitted). This impression is strengthened by the disclosure, which indicates that "[i]n one embodiment, the foamed resin . . . partially covers a second 13Page: Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013