Appeal No. 1997-1732
Application No. 08/236,895
All of the claims on appeal, namely, claims 21, 22, 26,
28 through 31, 35, 38 and 39, stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §
103 as being unpatentable over Sabatka and Nelson.1
We refer to the brief and to the answer for a thorough
discussion of the opposing viewpoints expressed by the
appellants and by the examiner concerning the above noted
rejection.
OPINION
As an initial matter, we observe that the examiner’s
section 103 rejection of dependent claim 28 unquestionably is
the result of an inadvertent oversight by the examiner. This
is because rejected claim 28 depends from claim 27 which the
examiner regards as containing allowable subject matter as we
noted previously. For this reason, we hereby vacate the
section 103 rejection of dependent claim 28 which has been
inadvertently advanced by the examiner on this appeal.
However, we will sustain the examiner’s section 103 rejection
1The appealed claims have been grouped and argued
separately as indicated on page 7 of the brief. Accordingly,
we will appropriately consider the separately grouped and
argued claims in our assessment of the rejection before us.
3
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