Appeal No. 2002-1626 Page 3
Application No. 09/287,135
OPINION
Initially we note that the examiner's drawing objection raised in the final rejection
relates to a petitionable matter and not to an appealable matter. See Manual of Patent
Examining Procedure (MPEP) §§ 1002 and 1201. Accordingly, we will not review the
drawing objection issue raised by the appellants on pages 5-6 of the brief.
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellants' specification and claims, and to the respective positions articulated by
the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we will not sustain
the rejection of claims 7, 8 and 16 to 19 for the reasons which follow.
The claims at issue
Claims 7, 8 and 16 to 19 read as follows:
7. The feeder according to claim 4, wherein said mechanism for varying said
stroke range continuously adjusts said stroke range depending on the remaining
number of electronic chip components in said hopper.
8. The feeder according to claim 4, wherein said stroke range is decreased
at least once when a number of remaining electronic chip components in said
hopper is reduced to one-fifth or less of the capacity of said hopper.
16. A method for feeding electronic chip components, comprising the steps of:
receiving a plurality of electronic chip components in a hopper of a feeder;
agitating the electronic chip components with an aligning path forming
member by moving the aligning path forming member over a stroke range,
thereby causing the electronic components to enter a tubular aligning path
formed by the aligning path forming member; and
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007