Appeal No. 1997-1349
Application 08/520,629
(March 17, 1995), which was controlling at the time of
Appellants’ filing the brief, states:
For each ground of rejection which appellant contests
and which applies to a group of two or more claims,
the Board shall select a single claim from the group
and shall decide the appeal as to the ground of
rejection on the basis of that claim alone unless a
statement is included that the claims of the group do
not stand or fall together and, in the argument under
paragraph (c)(8) of this section, appellant explains
why the claims of the group are believed to be
separately patentable. Merely pointing out
differences in what the claims cover is not an
argument as to why the claims are separately
patentable.
Although Appellants have provided a statement regarding
the groupings of the claims, Appellants have not in the
arguments section of the brief provided specific arguments
entirely consistent with these groupings. We note that the
arguments made for the independent claims 24 and 43 are the
same. Additionally, Appellants only repeated what some of the
dependent claims recite without any additional arguments set
forth. We will, thereby, consider Appellants’ claims as
standing or falling together as follows: for the rejection of
claims 24, 25, 31 through 33, 37, 38, 43, 56, and 79 through 82
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Kunii, claims 24, 25, 31, 37, 38,
43, and 56 will be treated as a group and we will treat claim
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