Appeal No. 1997-2977
Application No. 08/431,688
Although the appellants’ statement is equivocal, it fails to
include an assertion that the appealed claims do not stand or
fall together. Further, the appellants do not explain why the
claims are separately patentable. Therefore, we select claim
1 from the group of rejected claims and decide this appeal as
to the examiner’s grounds of rejection on the basis of this
claim alone. 37 C.F.R. § 1.192(c)(7) (1995).
We have carefully reviewed the entire record, including
all of the appellants’ arguments. This review leads us to
conclude that the examiner’s rejection under the fourth
paragraph of
35 U.S.C. § 112 is not well founded. However, we find
ourselves in agreement with the examiner as to the rejections
under the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 and 35 U.S.C. §
103. Accordingly, we affirm. The reasons for our
determination follow.
We consider first the examiner’s rejection of claim 7
under the fourth paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112. The fourth
paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 (1999) reads as follows:
Subject to the following paragraph, a claim in
dependent form shall contain a reference to a claim
previously set forth and then specify a further
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