Appeal No. 2006-3044 Page 10
Application No. 10/285,939
As recognized by the examiner, the claim does not recite: “a plurality of
buffer elements each being assigned to a unique one of said command tags.”
Alternately, appellants could have amended the claims to recite: “a plurality
of buffer elements each being assigned to a different one of said command
tags.” After carefully considering all of the evidence before us, we find that
the scope of the disputed claim language broadly but reasonably
encompasses the alternate interpretation argued by the examiner. Because
the broad language of the independent claims does not preclude the
alternate interpretation argued by the examiner, we do not find appellants’
arguments persuasive that Harriman teaches away from the instant claimed
invention. Therefore, we will sustain the examiner’s rejection of
representative claim 1 for essentially the same reasons argued by the
examiner in the answer.
We further note that appellants have not presented any substantive
arguments directed separately to the patentability of dependent claims 2, 5-
7 and 9-18. In the absence of a separate argument with respect to the
dependent claims, those claims stand or fall with the representative
independent claim. See In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 590, 18 USPQ2d 1089,
1091 (Fed. Cir. 1991). See also 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)(2004).
Therefore, we will sustain the examiner’s rejection of these claims for the
same reasons set forth by the examiner in the rejection.
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