Appeal No. 97-1544
Application 08/358,976
to the applied prior art references, and to the respective
positions articulated by appellant and the examiner. As a
consequence of our review, we have made the determinations
which follow.
As a preliminary matter, we note appellant’s three
groupings of the claims set forth on page 11 of the brief and
have selected the independent claim (i.e, claim 21, claim 23
and claim 28) of
each respective grouping as being representative. Per
appellant’s groupings, claims 1, 2, 5 through 7, 12, 13, 20
and 22 will stand or fall with claim 21, while claims 24
through 27 will stand or fall with claim 23. Claim 28 will
stand or fall alone.
Turning first to the examiner's rejection of claim 23
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) based on Matsui and using the
language of appellant’s claim 23 as a guide, we note that
Matsui discloses a tape switch crash sensor (col. 7, lines 50-
53, e.g., Figs. 15a, 15b) in combination with a vehicle (e.g.,
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007