Appeal 2007-1070
Application 09/467,901
Claims 1-6 and 8-23 are pending (Br. 2). Claim 15 is stated to be
allowable (Answer 2). Claims 1-6, 8-14, and 16-23 are appealed. The
Examiner cites the following patents as evidence of unpatentability:
Arnold US 6,004,745 Dec. 21, 1999
Johnson US 6,034,066 Mar. 7, 2000
Frank US 6,060,326 May 9, 2000
Johansen US 6,087,188 Jul. 11, 2000
Claims 1-5, 8-14, 16, and 21-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as obvious over Johansen in view of Johnson and Frank (Answer 3).
Claims 6 and 17-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as obvious
over Johansen in view of Johnson and Frank, and further in view of Arnold
(Answer 7).
Within the first rejection, Claims 1-5, 8-14, 16, 21, and 22 stand or
fall together; we select claim 1 as representative. However, separate
arguments were provided for the patentability of claim 23;1 thus, we
consider it separately. In the second rejection, claims 6 and 17-20 stand or
fall together because Appellant has not provided separate reasons for the
patentability of any individual claim in this grouping; we select claim 6 as
representative. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii). Claims 1, 6, and 23 read as
follows:
1 On pages 16-18 and 25-26 of their Brief, Appellant recites the claimed
features of dependent claims 2-5, 8, 9, 17-19, 20, and 21, but do not provide
arguments for their patentability apart from referring to the arguments set
forth for independent claims 1 and 6. “A statement which merely points out
what a claim recites will not be considered an argument for separate
patentability of the claim.” 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013