Appeal No. 2003-1529
Application No. 08/499,442
base claim but would be allowable if rewritten in independent form
including all of the limitations of the base claim and any
intervening claims (final Office action dated Sept. 12, 2001, Paper
No. 53, page 6; Brief, page 2). We have jurisdiction pursuant to
35 U.S.C. § 134.
According to appellant, the invention is directed to a process
for drying a gaseous or liquid mixture with the aid of an adsorber
composed of alumina and of a molecular sieve (Brief, page 4).
Appellant states that claims 3, 7 and 23 stand or fall together
while each of the other claims on appeal stand on their own (Brief,
page 6). To the extent appellant has provided reasonably specific,
substantive reasons for the separate patentability of individual
claims, we consider these claims separately. See 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(7)(2000); In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d
1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002). A copy of illustrative independent
claims 3 and 17 is attached as an Appendix to this decision.
The examiner has relied upon the following references as
support for the rejections on appeal:
Matyear, Jr. (Matyear) 2,910,139 Oct. 27, 1959
Bauer 3,691,251 Sept. 12, 1972
2
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