Appeal No. 1998-2571
Application No. 08/515,383
sustain the anticipation rejection of claims 36 and 37 over
Conway.
Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103
Claims 29 and 30 have been rejected over Conway in view
of Davies.
At the outset, we find that claims 29 and 30 do not
distinctly claim the subject matter of the invention. See our
rejection below under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph.
Since claims 29 and 30 contain unclear language which
renders the subject matter thereof indefinite for the reasons
stated infra under our discussion of the rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, we find that it is not
possible to apply the prior art to claims 29 and 30 in
deciding the question of obviousness under 35 U.S.C. § 103
without resorting to speculation and conjecture as to the
meaning of the questioned limitation in claim 29 and claim 30.
This being the case, we are therefore constrained to reverse
the examiner's rejection of claims 29 and 30 under 35 U.S.C. §
103 in light of the holding in In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859,
862, 134 USPQ 292, 295 (CCPA 1962). This reversal of the
Examiner's rejection is based only on the procedural ground
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007