Appeal No. 99-0920
Application No. 08/629,323
out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the
appellants regard as their invention.
Claims 20 through 31 and 33 are rejected under the first
paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 for failing to satisfy the
written description requirement of this paragraph.
Finally, claims 20 through 26, 29 and 33 are rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over the European
reference in view of Dickover and Mahoney.2
We refer to the brief and to the answer for a complete
exposition of the opposing viewpoints expressed by the
appellants and by the examiner concerning the above noted
rejections.
As a preliminary matter, certain of the appealed claims
have been separately grouped and argued (e.g., see page 3 of
2By an apparently inadvertent error on the examiner’s
part, claim 33 has not been listed in the statement of this
rejection on page 5 of the answer. It is quite clear,
however, that claim 33 should be included in the rejection
since this claim is discussed in the body of the rejection in
the sentence bridging pages 10 and 11 of the answer and more
particularly since this claim is listed in the statement of
this rejection in the final office action on page 2 thereof.
Moreover, the appellants in their brief have considered claim
33 to be included in the above noted prior art rejection
(e.g., see pages 3 and 4). Under these circumstances, we also
consider claim 33 to be included in this rejection and further
consider the examiner’s aforementioned error to be harmless.
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