Appeal No. 96-3189
Application 08/396,079
[brief, page 8]; and (4) the PTO is misplaced in questioning
the reason for the continuation series while the Appellant is
engaged in the "arduous route" of reaching claims adequately
covering the invention as in Moore [brief, pages 8 to 10].
The Examiner disagrees. The Examiner notes: (1) the
publication of the Japanese counterpart application is
irrelevant to the requirement of making an invention public in
exchange for a U. S. Patent [answer, page 5 through 8]; (2)
prolongation of a patent is effectively achieved by delaying
the issuance of it [answer, pages 8 to 9]; (3) repeated filing
of continuing applications where all the pending claims are
allowed in the original application prolongs the time of
publishing in a way that is adverse to the public interest,
which is consistent with footnote no. 9 of Moore [answer, page
9]; and (4) there could be many reasons for Appellants to
delay the issuance of a patent which may be relevant to
determine the propriety of Appellants' conduct during
prosecution according to Hull, infra [answer, page 10 to 11].
We have reviewed the arguments of Appellants and Examiner
on these four points. Regarding the first point, we conclude
that publication of a Japanese application on the invention is
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