Appeal No. 97-0124
Application No. 08/273,672
and arguments, claim 7 as depended from claim 4 rather than claim
5 (i.e., claim 7/4) is intended to be included in the 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) rejection. The Examiner has asserted the inherency of
the connecting element illustration in Guzowski’s Figure 2 as
meeting the claim 7 requirements. We agree. In our view, from
the illustration in Figure 2 of Guzowski depicting connecting
elements having differing widths in a transverse direction, an
imaginary line connecting the transverse edges of the connecting
elements would necessarily be longer than a line extending along
a parallel longitudinal axis between the connecting elements.
With regard to dependent claims 8, 9, and 10/1, these claims have
not been separately argued by Appellant and, accordingly, fall
with their parent claim.
Turning to the obviousness rejection of claims 2, 5, 7/5,
and 10/2, we note that in rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103,
it is incumbent upon the Examiner to establish a factual basis to
support the legal conclusion of obviousness. See In re Fine,
837 F.2d 1071, 1073, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988). In
so doing, the Examiner is expected to make the factual
determinations set forth in Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1,
17, 148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966), and to provide a reason why one
having ordinary skill in the pertinent art would have been led to
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