Appeal No. 1999-1494
Application 08/596,062
unpatentable over claims 1 through 10 of the Reynolds patent.
Claims 1, 2, 4 through 7 and 9 also stand rejected under
the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double
patenting as being unpatentable over claims 1 through 16 of
the Bernard patent in view of Woods.
Reference is made to the appellants’ main and reply
briefs (Paper Nos. 11 and 13) and to the examiner’s answer
(Paper No. 12) for the respective positions of the appellants
and the examiner with regard to the merits of these
rejections.
In arguing the first rejection, the appellants submit
that
the owner of expired [P]atent No. 3,408,699 to
Reynolds is not and never has been the assignee of
the current application, Panduit Corp. Nor is there
any common inventorship between Reynolds ‘699 and
the present invention. Therefore, since there is no
common relationship of inventorship and/or
ownership, there should be no consideration given to
the issue of double patenting (see MPEP §804
Definition of Double Patenting) [main brief, page 3;
reply brief, page 4].
The examiner has not challenged the asserted lack of
common relationship of inventorship and/or ownership.
Instead, the examiner, relying on the provisions of 35 U.S.C.
3
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