Appeal No. 95-1276
Application 07/839,969
Lord et al. (Lord), Materials Evaluation, Volume 35, No. 11,
pages 49-54, November 1977.
THE REJECTION
Claims 21-87 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 “as
being unpatentable over Lygas or Kent et al when taken with Lord
or Cox et al, and Ely (US Patent) and Hoyle et al, or Schuster or
Moser et al.” (Final Rejection at page 2). 2
Rather than reiterate the respective positions of the
examiner and the appellants in support of their respective
positions, reference is made to the examiner’s answer (Paper No.
14) and the appellants’ brief (Paper No. 12) for the full
exposition thereof.
OPINION
We have carefully reviewed the appellants’ invention as
described in the specification, the appealed claims, the prior
2By our count, the examiner’s uses of the word “or” in the
statement of the rejection results in no less than 12 different
and distinct possible combinations of references. It is
questionable whether this circumstance fulfills the examiner’s
basic duty to clearly inform applicants of the evidentiary basis
of the rejection. In this instance, however, we decline to
remand the present application to the examiner for clarification
since the explanation of the rejection found in the body of the
answer clarifies the manner in which the references are applied
to the degree necessary for us to decide the obviousness issues
raised in this appeal on the merits.
3
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