Appeal No. 1999-0739
Application 08/747,663
introducing a liquid under pressure, via openings (7) in the
ends of the
fingers, between the taste buds and onto the floor of the
tongue. Independent claims 1 and 12 are representative of the
subject matter on appeal and a copy of those claims can be
found in the Appendix to appellant’s brief.
The prior art references relied upon by the examiner
in rejecting the appealed claims are:
Curtis et al. (Curtis) 5,098,291 Mar. 24, 1992
Nack et al. (Nack) 5,226,197 July 13, 1993
As stated in the final rejection (Paper No. 6),
claims 1 through 6 and 8 through 17 stand rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Curtis, while claims 7
and 18 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Curtis in view of Nack.2
2While the examiner has not expressly repeated all of the
rejections applicable to the claims before us on appeal in the
examiner’s answer (Paper No. 9), it is clear from a review of
the final rejection, appellant’s brief (Paper No. 8) and the
totality of the examiner’s answer (particularly sections 3, 6,
7 and 8) that the rejections as stated above are those that
are before us for consideration on appeal. We are at a loss
to understand why all of the applicable prior art references
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007