Appeal No. 2006-0281
Application 10/442,950
the fact that appellant could have timely petitioned the
propriety of the answer or filed a reply brief, the examiner’s
answer is procedurally flawed, and we have the situation before
us where three of the reference applied against all of the claims
on appeal have not been argued by appellant.
Accordingly, we remand the application to the examiner to
obtain the approval of the Director of the Technology Center for
the new ground of rejection, or from the individual(s) this
responsibility has been delegated to, and to give appellant two
months to respond to the new ground of rejection, as noted in the
passage of the MPEP, recited, supra.
OBSERVATIONS AND REMARKS
We make note of the statement (answer, page 8), with respect to
claim 5, that “it would take a truly retarded individual to not
realize that the outermost knife has to move first.” We do not
condone the examiner’s choice of language in responding to
appellant’s argument. We remind the examiner that the need for
decorum and courtesy cuts both ways.
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007