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Ex parte NILSSEN - Page 5
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Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences > 1997 > Ex parte NILSSEN - Page 5
Appeal No. 95-3616 Page 5
Application 07/839,065
B. Claims 62-64 and 66-73 are unpatentable for obviousness
2. Appellant has argued all claims but claim 64 as one4
group. (Paper at 2.) All of the claims in the group require a
resistor, a resistive path, or resistance means associated with
the lamp circuit assembly except claim 69, which requires a
capacitor associated with the lamp circuit assembly. The
difference is not important since the examiner's rationale
requires a resistor in parallel with a capacitor. (Paper 54
at 7.) Genuit's lamp circuit contains neither a resistor nor a
capacitor, so it is not clear why a person having ordinary skill
in the art would have been motivated to add a capacitor or
resistor, respectively, to the lamp circuit. Appellant correctly
notes (Paper 53 at 4) that simply because standard circuit
components could have been added does not mean that it would have
been obvious to do so. In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ
1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
3. Claim 64 depends from claim 62 and the examiner has
rejected both over the same reference. Since we reverse the
4 Appellant neither includes claim 63 as part of the
group nor argues it separately. Since we have affirmed a
section 112 rejection against claim 63, for simplicity's sake we
will assume Appellant intended claim 63 to stand or fall with its
parent, claim 62, for the purposes of the obviousness
determination. Nevertheless, Appellant and the examiner should
take care to ensure that the argued groups account for all
rejected claims. Otherwise, we may conclude that Appellant did
not intend to appeal any claims not argued.
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Last modified: November 3, 2007
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