Appeal No. 95-0953
Application 07/976,328
The final rejection of all claims under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) as being anticipated by Kempka, U.S. Patent
4,783,813, has been withdrawn (Examiner's Answer, page 3).
Claims 1-3, 9-12, and 17 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(e) as being anticipated by Dufresne.
Claims 1-4, 6-13, and 15-17 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Pfeiffer.
We refer to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 14) for a
complete statement of the examiner's position and to the
replacement Brief (Paper No. 13) and the Reply Brief (Paper
No. 16) for appellant's response.
OPINION
Grouping of claims
The examiner errs in considering the dependent claims to
stand or fall together with independent claim 1 under 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(5) (1994).
As appellant points out (Reply Brief, page 3): "there
were two sets of claims, one to a chestpiece [claims 1-4 and
6-8] and one to a stethoscope [claims 9-13 and 15-17]."
Claim 9 is, in effect, an independent claim to a stethoscope
- 3 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007