Appeal No. 97-3085
Application 08/236,835
Given the absence of a terminal disclaimer, the court affirmed
the double patenting rejection entered against the application
claims.
As indicated above, Applications 08/236,809, 08/236,835,
08/236,838 and 08/236,069 contain essentially identical
disclosures. These applications are commonly assigned and
were voluntarily filed as separate applications even though
there is no apparent reason why the claims contained in each
could not have been included in a single application. Also,
none of the applications includes a terminal disclaimer.
Thus, depending on the scope of the claims, the potential
certainly exists for one or more of the applications on
appeal, if allowed, to provide an unjustified timewise
extension of the right to exclude granted by a patent maturing
from any of the other applications.
The appellant's brief (see pages 29 through 31) contains
a tabular summary of the scope of the respective sets of
claims involved in the double patenting issue presented in
this appeal. This summary, and our own review, indicate that
the claims in the instant application, if allowed, would not
result in any timewise extension of the right to exclude
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Last modified: November 3, 2007