Appeal No. 2000-1250
Application No. 08/662,077 Page 11
appellants, for the reasons set forth in the first two full
paragraphs of page 8 of the brief, that even if the teachings of
Ramstrom and Astmann were combined, the resultant method would
not meet the limitations of claim 1.
From all of the above, we therefore find that the examiner
has failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness of
claim 1. Accordingly, the rejection of claim 1 and claims 2-6
dependent therefrom under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
We turn next to the rejection of claims 7-15 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103. The examiner additionally relies upon Orfali. We begin
with claims 7-10 which depend from claim 1. We reverse the
rejection of claims 7-10 because Orfali does not make up for the
deficiencies of the basic combination of Ramstrom and Astmann.
We turn next to the rejection of independent claim 11. The
examiner’s position (answer, page 7) is that claim 11 is rejected
for the same reasons as claims 1 and 7. Appellants (brief, page
12) make a similar statement, stating that the rejection should
be withdrawn for at least the same reasons as claims 1 and 7. We
observe that claim 11 is not quite commensurate in scope with
claim 7, which depends from claim 1. Nevertheless, we reverse
the rejection of independent claim 11 because Orfali does not
make up for the deficiencies of the basic combination of Ramstrom
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