Appeal No. 1997-3678
Application No. 08/485,161
(Paper No. 29), while the complete statement of appellant’s
argument can be found in the amended brief (Paper No. 28).3
OPINION
In reaching our conclusion on the issues raised in this
appeal, this panel of the board has carefully considered
appellant’s specification and claims, the applied teachings, 4 5
3A reply brief submitted by appellant was denied entry
for the reasons set forth in the examiner’s communication
dated July 21, 1999 (Paper No. 35). It follows, of course,
that the content of the reply brief is not before us for
consideration.
4Claim 3, as it appears in the appendix to the brief as
well as in the application file, improperly depends from
canceled claim 2. For purposes of this appeal, we shall view
claim 3 as if it depended from claim 1. We note that
appellant (brief, page 4) describes claim 3 as depending from
claim 1. The matter of this improper dependency will be
further treated below. Additionally, certain words of degree
in the claims may pose an issue of indefiniteness, as further
pointed out, infra. Nevertheless, we do understand the
claimed invention to the extent that we can assess the prior
art rejections on appeal.
5In our evaluation of the applied prior art, we have
considered all of the disclosure of each document for what it
(continued...)
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