Appeal 2007-0174
Application 09/780,303
claims 25 and 26 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Pepper in view of Uchida and McCullough.
Appellants have not set forth separate arguments for any particular
claim in the separately rejected groups of claims. Nor have appellants
advanced separate substantive arguments for the separate § 103 rejections of
claims 10-12 and 25-26, respectively. For the separate § 103 rejections of
claims 10-12 and 25-26 appellants simply rely upon the arguments set forth
for independent claim 9, upon which claims 10-12 and 25-26 depend.
Accordingly, all the appealed claims stand or fall together, and we will limit
our consideration to the examiner’s § 103 rejection of claim 9.
We have thoroughly reviewed each of Appellants’ arguments for
patentability. However, we are in complete agreement with the Examiner
that the claimed subject matter would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art within the meaning of § 103 in view of the applied prior art.
Accordingly, we will sustain the Examiner’s rejections for essentially those
reasons expressed in the Answer, and we add the following primarily for
emphasis.
Appellants do not dispute the Examiner’s factual determination that
Pepper, like Appellants, discloses a method for making carbon fibers which
includes stabilizing the precursor fiber by heating it in an oxidizing
environment under tension, and then continuously carbonizing the stabilized
fiber by further heating it in a final one of a plurality of furnaces. As
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