Appeal No. 96-3189
Application 08/396,079
and the courts whose decisions we have looked at for guidance.
However, we find that these cases did not involve a fact
situation which is the same as we have in this case. In the
instant case, claims 1 through 5 and 7 through 23, the claims
originally presented for examination, were indicated as
allowable, after two office actions and two amendments, on
August 26, 1993, in the original '449 application. At that
point, claim 6 had been canceled and there were no other
outstanding issues remaining in the application. In fact,
that remained the status of the claims until February 28,
1995. During this period, Appellants withheld paying the
issue fee, and filed two file-wrapper-continuation
applications, with exactly the same claims. A first action
notice of allowance was sent in each case, and
each case was abandoned in favor of another file-wrapper-
continuation application.
The last notice of allowance was mailed on November 30,
1994. Along with this notice, the Examiner finally included a
warning, the type of warning the Board had mentioned in Hull,
putting Appellants on notice that "filing further continuing
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