Appeal No. 2000-1963
Application No. 09/272,989
claim the subject matter the appellant regards as the
invention.
Claim 1 also stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Villarreal in view of Bock.
Attention is directed to the appellant’s brief (Paper No.
7) and to the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 8) for the
respective positions of the appellant and the examiner with
regard to these rejections.
DISCUSSION
I. The 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, rejection
The appellant’s assertion that “[t]here is no rejection
under 35 U.S,C. [sic] 112, second paragraph” (brief, page 2)
is technically correct as neither the final rejection (Paper
No. 5) nor the examiner’s answer contains a formal statement
of such a rejection. The remarks in these papers clearly
show, however, that the examiner considers claim 1 to be
indefinite and that the failure to formally state a
corresponding rejection was inadvertent. In order to expedite
the proceedings in this appeal, we have assumed that such a
rejection was properly entered and shall review the merits of
the examiner’s position. As should be apparent from the
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007