Appeal No. 1996-4176
Application No. 08/287,915
examiner. Accordingly, the examiner has not established a
prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d
1350, 1357-1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453, 1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998).
The § 103 Rejection Over Japan (‘044)
As an initial matter, appellants submit that the claims
do not stand or fall together. Appellants’ argument on behalf
of separate consideration of each claim is limited to a
statement that separate arguments for patentability exists
with respect to four groups of claims. See Brief, pages 3-4.
The subsequent portion of the Brief, directed to the rejection
of claims 8 through 12 and 33 through 37 over Japan (‘044),
does not contain any reasons why appellants consider the
rejected claims to be separately patentable. See Brief, page
6. Based on the above considerations, we shall treat the
claims of the above rejection as standing or falling together.
We select claim 8 as representative of appellants’ invention
and limit out consideration to said claim. See 37 CFR § 1.192
(c)(7)(1995).
Appellants argue that the term “consisting essentially
of” in claim 8 excludes the presence of magnesium which is an
indispensable component of the aluminum alloy disclosed in
7
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