Appeal No. 1999-0172
Application 08/334,733
appellants and the examiner with regard to the merits of these
rejections.3
DISCUSSION
I. The appellants’ assertion of an earlier filing date benefit
under 35 U.S.C. § 120.
The threshold issue in this appeal is whether the subject
matter recited in the claims at bar is entitled under 35
U.S.C. § 120 to the benefit of the December 10, 1991 filing
date of parent application 07/804,368 as urged by the
appellants (see, for example, pages 7 through 9 in the main
brief). If so, Mansell, Welles, Bickley and Alesio would not
be prior art with respect to these claims, and the examiner’s
reliance thereon to support the appealed rejections would be
3 Although the final rejection (Paper No. 14) contained a
number of rejections in addition to those listed above, the
examiner has since withdrawn all of the additional rejections
(see page 3 in the substitute answer). It is also noted that
the version of claim 11 appearing in the appendix to the
appellants’ main brief bears no resemblance to the claim 11
which is actually of record.
7
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