Appeal No. 96-0317
Application 08/042,185
Claims 1-10 and 12-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over appellants’ acknowledged prior art in view of Leas, Lindmayer ‘391 or
Lindmayer ‘812, and Ballard.
OPINION
We have carefully considered all of the arguments advanced by appellants and the
examiner and agree with the examiner that the invention recited in claims 1-7, 10 and 12-
17 would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of appellants’
invention over the applied references. Accordingly, the aforementioned rejection of these
claims will be affirmed. However, we agree with appellants that the above rejection of
claims 8, 9 and 18-20 is not well founded. We therefore will reverse this rejection.
At the outset, we note that appellants state that the claims stand or fall in five groups
as follows: 1) claims 1-7, 16 and 17; 2) claims 8 and 18; 3) claims 9, 19 and 20; 4) claims
10, 13 and 14; 5) claims 12 and 15 (brief, pages 3-4). Appellants, however, separately
argue only the first three groups (brief, pages 4-7). We therefore consider the claims in the
fourth and fifth groups to stand or fall with the broadest claim argued, i.e., claim 1, and limit
our discussion of the first, fourth and fifth groups to that claim. See In re Ochiai, 71 F.3d
1565, 1566 n.2, 37 USPQ2d 1127, 1129 n.2 (Fed. Cir. 1995); 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(5)(1993).
The acknowledged prior art relied upon by the examiner (answer, page 4) includes
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