Appeal No. 97-0773
Application No. 08/101,391
THE REJECTIONS
Claims 23-28 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Guttman in view of Monestere, Vaillancourt ‘675
and Vaillancourt ‘168.2
The rejections are explained in the Examiner's Answer.
The opposing viewpoints of the appellant are set forth in
the Brief and the Reply Brief.
OPINION
In reaching our decision on the issues raised in this
appeal, we have carefully assessed the claims, the prior art
applied against the claims, and the respective views of the
examiner and the appellant as set forth in the Answer and the
Briefs. As a result of our review, we have determined that the
rejection should be sustained. Our reasoning in support of this
conclusion follows.
In the case of a Section 103 rejection, the examiner bears
the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness (see In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d
1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993)), which is established when the
2An obviousness-type double patenting rejection was overcome
by the filing of a terminal disclaimer (Paper No. 12).
3
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