Appeal No. 1997-1506 Page 5
Application No. 08/442,413
challenge this assertion and note that claim 6 should depend
from claim 15, which does provide antecedent basis for the
lever, not claim 14. However, since the record does not
indicate that any formal amendment has been made to claim 6 to
change its dependency from claim 14 to claim 15, we shall
sustain the examiner's rejection of claims 6 through 11 under
35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. 3
Enablement Rejection
Insofar as the enablement requirement is concerned, the
dispositive issue is whether the appellants’ disclosure,
considering the level of ordinary skill in the art as of the
date of the appellants’ application, would have enabled a
person of such skill to make and use the appellants’ invention
without undue experimentation. In re Strahilevitz, 668 F.2d
1229, 1232, 212 USPQ 561, 563-64 (CCPA 1982). In calling into
question the enablement of the appellants’ disclosure, the
examiner has the initial burden of advancing acceptable
reasoning inconsistent with enablement. Id.
3As noted by the examiner, the copy of claim 6 in the appendix to the
appellants' brief is an inaccurate reproduction of the claim of record, in
that the claim 6 of record depends from claim 14, not claim 15.
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