Appeal No. 2001-0220
Application No. 09/244,044
find that the examiner has committed reversible error in
dismissing the claim limitation concerning the dam and not
establishing, prima facie, that the tundish/dam arrangement of
Schmidt meets the claim limitation.
As for the § 102 rejection of claims 30 and 31, we do not
agree with appellants that the claim language "said dam having
holes consisting essentially of a pair of holes substantially
uniformly spaced across the width of said dam" provides a
patentable distinction over Schmidt. We say this because it is
not clear what meaning to ascribe to the language "substantially
uniformly spaced across the width of said dam," i.e., does the
language mean that each of two holes have to be equally spaced
from the nearest side edge of the dam, or must the two holes be
positioned at locations one-third and two-thirds of the width of
the dam. Also, it is not clear to us that the claim language
does not encompass any pair of holes depicted by Schmidt that are
uniformly spaced across the width of the dam. However, we cannot
sustain this rejection because appellant's argument that "there
clearly and unequivocally is no teaching of the 25 mm-50% of the
height of the dam limitation set forth in claim 30" (page 10 of
principal brief, second paragraph) has not been addressed by the
examiner. Our review of the examiner's rejection and Response in
-5-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007