Appeal No. 97-2939 Page 4
Application No. 08/431,798
answer. Accordingly, the rejection of claims 1 through 3
under 35 U.S.C. 103, based on Liedtke, Stromberg and Pruitt, is
not before us and we make no decision as to its propriety. The
presence or absence of a rejection is not dependent on whether
or not it is argued by appellant but, rather, whether the
examiner maintains the rejection in the answer.
We now turn to the rejection that is before us, that is,
the rejection of claims 1 through 3 under 35 U.S.C. 103 over
Liedtke and Pruitt.
While we sustained the rejection of the claims in our
earlier decision based on these same references, the claims of
the instant case are not the same as the previous claims. The
instant claims are of narrower scope.
Instant claim 1 specifies that the plurality of rod
members are “wooden” with “a diameter of about 1/4 inches” and
that “each of said outer rod members being in contact with said
centrally-disposed inner rod member and adjacent ones of said
outer rod members...” Instant claim 1 also more specifically
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