Appeal No. 2006-0502 Παγε 5
Application No. 10/051,970
to each of the rejected claims identified in the examiner’s
second anticipation rejection.1
In addition, the examiner refers to material obtained from a
website at page 8 of the answer without identifying the date of
public availability thereof. In this regard, we remind the
examiner that any references relied upon should be identified in
the statement of the rejection. Moreover, we note that the issue
as to the scope of the claim terms “chemical toxin” and
“biological toxin” should not be addressed by merely referencing
a web site definition of applied references’ terms. Rather, the
examiner should be determining the scope of the contested claim
terms by taking into account the usage of those claim terms in
the claims themselves, when read as a whole, taking into account
how those same terms are used in appellants’ specification, as
they would be understood by one of ordinary skill in the art.
Also, any specific definitions of those terms, if furnished in
1 As an additional matter, we note that the examiner erroneously includes
cancelled claims 2, 3, 7 and 8 in the obviousness rejection set forth at pages 6 and 7 of
the answer.
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