Appeal No. 1998-2646
Application No. 08/685,365
According to the Examiner's statement of rejection on
page 3 of the answer, claims 1, 2, 4 -6, 8, 13 and 14 are 1 2
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Stahl or Craigie in view of Yang and the EPA reference.
We refer to the brief and reply brief and to the answer
for a complete exposition of the opposing viewpoints expressed
by the Appellants and by the Examiner concerning the above
noted rejection.
OPINION
As correctly indicated by the Appellants in their brief,
obviousness cannot be established by combining the teachings
1As indicated by the Appellants on page 2 of the brief,
claim 4 is informal in that it depends from now canceled claim
3. This informality should be corrected in any further
prosecution that may occur.
2Claims 13 and 14 were not included in the Examiner's
statement of this rejection as set forth in the final office
action. Apparently, in preparing the answer, the Examiner
came to realize that these claims depend from elected
independent claims 1 and 6 rather than non-elected independent
claim 9 and therefore added claims 13 and 14 to the statement
of rejection which appears on page 3 of the answer. The
Examiner's actions regarding these last mentioned claims are
harmless particularly in light of our disposition of this
appeal.
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