Appeal No. 96-1898
Application No. 07/921,826
principal brief should be deleted and that claims 6 through 24
should be relabeled as claims 5 through 23, respectively.
With regard to the statements of rejection, the
examiner’s presentation of the grounds of rejection is
confusing. With regard to the rejections based on prior art,
under 35 U.S.C. 103, the principal answer indicates that
Ferrer and Blaha are employed against claim 11, that Ferrer
and Burns is applied against claim 23, that Ferrer and Joseph
is applied against claims 12 through 22 and, in a new ground
of rejection, entered in the principal answer, Ferrer and
Joseph is also applied against claims 1 through 10 (this
should be claims 1 and 3 through 10 since claim 2 has been
canceled). This would have been well and good but then, in
the supplemental answer, the examiner states other grounds of
rejection based on prior art with Ferrer and Joseph applied
against claims 1 and 3 through 10 and Ferrer, Joseph and Blaha
applied against claim 11. Further, it is not clear from the
supplemental answer whether these are new grounds of rejection
or mere restatements of grounds previously recited. They would
appear to be restatements but whereas only Ferrer and Blaha
were employed against claim 11 previously, the examiner now
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