Opinion ID: 427227
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Claim Construction--Other Considerations

Text: 34 That reaction in the claims need not be confined to production of an aluminosilicate is consistent with the dictionary definition. That in Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1974) includes both chemical transformation or change, and interaction of chemical entities, which are consistent with the definitions appearing in Hackh's Chemical Dictionary (1969) and the American Heritage Dictionary (1970). 35 When an oxide coated aluminum surface is contacted with an aqueous solution of water soluble alkali metal silicate, chemical change occurs in at least two ways. First, ions or other chemical units in solution have somehow interacted to form a solid structure. Second, the water insoluble solid structure, whatever may be its precise nature (e.g., silica or aluminosilicate), is not identical to the water soluble alkali metal silicate and oxidized aluminum that interacted to produce it. Moreover, there is clearly present an interaction of chemical entities. 36 The foregoing is fully consistent with long-standing use of reaction in the lithography art. Claims are normally construed as they would be by those of ordinary skill in the art. See e.g., Schenck v. Nortron Corp., 713 F.2d 782, 785, 218 USPQ 698, 701-02 (Fed.Cir.1983). Jewett interchangeably uses terms such as treating, treatment, and react, to describe a lithographic plate producing process. Jewett's claims use reacting, treatment, and reaction product. Jewett makes no attempt to define the structure of the layer there disclosed (as an aluminosilicate compound or otherwise), although it does mention the hydrophilic layer as being chemically bonded to the aluminum surface. Jewett refers to the layer as silicate treatment, as silicate or silicon containing film, or as an inorganic material such as silicate. It is not unreasonable to conclude that one of ordinary skill in the lithography art would interpret react in Fromson to mean the same thing it appears to mean in Jewett, i.e., the treatment of a metal substrate with an aqueous solution to yield a layer, regardless of the chemical structure of the layer or the proper label for the phenomena that produced it.