Appeal No. 2001-1196
Application No. 09/139,155
Reference is made to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 13,
mailed September 14, 2000) for the examiner's complete reasoning
in support of the rejections, and to appellants' Brief (Paper No.
11, filed July 31, 2000) and Reply Brief (Paper No. 14, filed
November 14, 2000) for appellants' arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
As a preliminary matter, we note that appellants indicate on
pages 3-4 of the Brief that the claims should stand or fall
separately. However, the only claims argued separately in the
Brief are claims 2, 4, 5, 11, and 12, for which appellants argue
a rejection that has not been applied against the claims.
37 C.F.R. § 1.192(7) states:
For each ground of rejection which appellant
contests and which applies to a group of two or more
claims, the Board shall select a single claim from the
group and shall decide the appeal as to the ground of
rejection on the basis of that claim alone unless a
statement is included that the claims of the group do
not stand or fall together and, in the argument under
paragraph (c)(8) of this section, appellant explains
why the claims of the group are believed to be
separately patentable. . . . (Emphasis ours)
We note that in the Reply Brief (at page 10), appellants do
present arguments for some of the dependent claims not argued in
the Brief. However, 37 C.F.R. § 1.192(a) states that "[a]ny
arguments or authorities not included in the brief will be
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