Appeal No. 97-0480
Application No. 07/858,818
III. Claims 10, 13, 14 and 16 stand provisionally rejected under the judicially created
doctrine of obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1-7, 9-16, 19, 21-24,
37-40 and 42 of copending application no. 07/931,882 in view of Sanford.
For reasons infra, we will reverse rejections I and II and affirm rejection III.
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the appellants’
specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the respective positions articulated
by the appellants and the examiner. We make reference to the examiner’s answer (Paper no. 27,
mailed June 07, 1996) for the examiner’s complete reasoning in support of the rejections, and to the
appellants’ brief (revised) (Paper no. 26, filed December 11, 1995) for the appellants’ arguments.
Appellants state the claims “stand or fall together as a single group” (Brief, page 6). We
therefore limit our discussion to claim 10. 37 C.F.R. § 1.192(c)(5)(1994).
OPINION
I. Rejection of claims 10, 13, 14 and 16 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Sanford taken with Klein.
a. Claim interpretation
During ex parte prosecution, claims are to be given their broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the description of the invention in the specification. In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321, 13
USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989). Unless otherwise defined by applicant in the specification,
claim language should be read in light of the specification as it would be interpreted by those of ordinary
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