Appeal No. 96-1741
Application 08/160,111
32, 34-36, 38, 39, 53-64, 71, 73-75, 77 and 78. Accordingly,
we affirm.
We consider first the provisional rejection of claims
1-25, 27-64 and 66-93 on the judicially created doctrine of
obviousness-type double patenting as being unpatentable over
claims 1-97 of copending application Serial No. 08/160,298.
According to the examiner, the only difference between the
claims of this application and the claims of the copending
application is the recitation of a shifter in the claims of
the copending application in place of the barrel rotator
recited in the claims in this application. The examiner
provides a reason as to why it would have been obvious to the
artisan to use a barrel rotator in place of the claimed
shifter of the copending application [answer, pages 3-4].
Appellants’ only response to this rejection is to
indicate that the rejection should be held in abeyance until
all other issues have been resolved in accordance with the
procedure of MPEP § 804 [brief, page 4]. The section of the
MPEP referred to by appellants merely provides guidance to the
examiner as to what to do when an application is otherwise
ready for allowance except for the double patenting rejection.
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