Appeal No. 2004-1887
Application No. 09/430,469
necessarily follows that, for this reason alone, the Examiner has
failed to carry her initial burden of establishing a prima facie
case of anticipation. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445,
24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
Under the circumstances set forth above and in the brief, we
also cannot sustain the Examiner’s § 102 rejection of claims 1-11,
15-19 and 21-25 as being anticipated by GCX.
The Section 102 rejection based on Hikosaka
We have fully considered all of the comments expressed by the
Examiner in her answer concerning this rejection. However, absent
from the answer is any meaningful and rational explanation as to
why the Examiner considers specifically identified disclosure in
the Hikosaka reference to satisfy the requirement set forth in
the last clause of appealed independent claim 1. For example,
no support for an anticipation finding relative to this claim
requirement is provided by the Examiner’s statements that “the
electrical control unit 21 [of Hikosaka] is disclosed as
operatively coupled to the analyzer and is for driving and
controlling analyses of the gas component by the system” (answer,
page 10) or that “the selector switch 47, (i.e. sample handling
system component) is switched in response to a signal from the
controller, which is coupled to the analyzer” (answer, pages 10-11)
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