Appeal No. 97-2610
Application 08/236,809
The claims in each of the applications on appeal stand
finally rejected under the judicially created doctrine of
double patenting in view of the claims in each of the other
three related applications. With specific regard to the
instant appeal, the examiner states the rejection as follows:
Claims 1-10 are provisionally rejected under the
judicially created doctrine of double patenting over
claims 1-8 of copending Application No. 08/236,069,
over claims 1-15 [sic, claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9-13 and
15-21] of copending Application No. 08/236,835, and
over claims 1-34 [sic, claims 1-6, 8-12, 14-20, 22-
27 and 29-34] of copending Application No.
08/236,838. This is a provisional double patenting
rejection since the conflicting claims have not yet
been patented.[5]
The subject matter claimed in the instant
application is fully disclosed in the referenced
copending application[s] and would be covered by any
patent[s] granted on that copending application
[sic, those copending applications] since the
referenced copending application[s] and the instant
application are claiming common subject matter, as
follows: generic torque transmitting resilient
means, torque transmitting c-shaped spring, torque
transmitting c-shaped spring functioning as a
5“Provisional” rejections of the sort here involved are
authorized by MPEP § 804 and have been sanctioned by this
Board (see Ex parte Karol, 8 USPQ2d 1771 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int.
1988)) and by the predecessor of our reviewing court (see In
re Wetterau, 356 F.2d 556, 148 USPQ 499 (CCPA 1966)). As
indicated above, Application 08/236,069 has matured into U.S.
Patent No. 5,577,963. Thus, to the extent that the appealed
rejection is based on the claims in Application 08/236,069,
the “provisional” designation no longer applies.
-4-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007