Appeal No. 96-2630
Application No. 08/259,824
Busker in view of Burgess or Benz, the examiner’s application of
Burgess or Benz again being, at worst, superfluous. The
appellants, stating that “Claims 23-25 are to considered as a
group and Claims 26-30 are to be considered as a separate group”
(brief, page 3), have not argued the merits of any particular
claim in these groups apart from the others. Thus, claims 24, 25
and 27 through 30 stand or fall with representative claims 23 and
26 (see In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 591, 18 USPQ2d 1089, 1091
(Fed. Cir. 1991)).
Inasmuch as the basic thrust of our affirmance of the
35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 23 through 30 based on Busker
differs from the rationale advanced by the examiner for the
rejection, we hereby designate the affirmance to be a new ground
of rejection pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b) to allow the
appellants a fair opportunity to react thereto (see In re Kronig,
539 F.2d 1300, 1302-1303, 190 USPQ 425, 426-427 (CCPA 1976)).
As for the standing 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection of claims
23 through 30 as being anticipated by Klowak, Sanford, Weldon,
Smith, Hostetler or Ogden, it is well settled that anticipation
is established only when a single prior art reference discloses,
expressly or under principles of inherency, each and every
element of a claimed invention. RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital
10
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007