Appeal No. 1997-3995
Application No. 07/952,303
there is no benefit to be gained as asserted by the examiner.
The examiner does not respond to this argument. The examiner
simply refers to the final rejection which never responded to
these arguments and only addressed a rejection made on
references to Burke and Steigerwald but not to the rejection
based on Walden and Burke.
It is sufficient to note that the examiner has utterly
failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness. In our
view, appellant has raised several legitimate questions
regarding the teachings of the applied prior art which have
gone unanswered by the examiner. Since the examiner has not
addressed the differences asserted by appellant between the
invention of claim 1 and the teachings of the applied prior
art, the examiner has not met his burden of establishing a
prima facie case of obviousness. Therefore, we do not sustain
the rejection of claim 1 or of claims 2-9 which depend
therefrom. Since independent claim 42 has limitations similar
to claim 1, we do not sustain the rejection of claim 42.
With respect to independent claim 17, appellant again
points to specific features of the claim and argues that the
examiner has not identified any elements in the applied prior
8
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