Appeal No. 95-3900 Page 7
Application No. 07/978,030
claim 9 as unpatentable under section 103 in view of the
teachings of Rammos taken as a whole.
Appellants argue "the individual elements of the
dependent claims are not taught as being combined with the
subject matter as specified in Claim 9". (Paper 23 at 4.)
They have not, however, argued any of the individual claim
elements with the degree of specificity required under our
rules. 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(5) (1988); 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)
(1997). Moreover, such nominal arguments run the risk of
being non-responsive in the face of more specific findings
presented by the examiner. For instance, the examiner posits
that the plate thicknesses recited in claims 2 and 5 are
design expedients within the skill of the art. This finding,
while unsupported, is quite plausible. Appellants' argument
that these limitations "are not taught" in the reference
misses the point of the rejection. Consequently, we affirm
the section 103 rejection for claims 2 and 5 because the
preponderance of evidence (i.e., the examiner's unchallenged
finding) supports the rejection.
Claims 6 and 7 require patterns of a plurality of array
element connected to each other to form a specific direction
of circular polarization. The examiner contends that Rammos'
"film substrate 23 has printed patterns of resonance array
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