The opinion
WORLEY, Chief Judge (dissenting).
It sems to me that the majority is making fish out of the application structure and fowl out of the same structure in the reference. Thus the majority finds that the term “metal annulus” in the claims has a meaning broad enough to include the construction of appellant’s Fig. 9 with “an inwardly projecting annular flange 53 which is integral with the top plate” and yet concludes that the same term does not apply to Dailey, which obviously also has an inwardly projecting flange integral with the top plate, merely because the claims require the annulus to be a separate element.
The Patent Office being charged with determining whether application claims define over the prior art, I cannot agree with the majority that the issue of whether the present claims so define is “one of semantics more than one of substance.” Neither do I think that the reference to the “metal annulus” in terms of a lifting function which may be performed on it changes the broad application claims, which lack any structural distinction over the prior art, into “specific, narrow claims” which are patentable over that art.
Finding no error in the board’s decision, I would affirm.