Appeal No. 1999-0705 Page 7
Application No. 08/129,615
NEW GROUND OF REJECTION
Pursuant to the provisions of 37 CFR § 1.196(b), we make the following new ground
of rejection.
Claim 33 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being indefinite for
failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the appellants
regard as the invention. In particular, we note the recitation of
generally parallel webs having adjacent converging web sides that converge
toward said top of said tile in a generally inverted, smoothly contoured and
curved, U-shaped configuration, said walls of said web meeting in a common
line forming a tile cut line therebetween [emphasis added] . . .
Initially, "said walls of said web" lack clear antecedent basis in the claim. While it appears that
the appellants may have inadvertently used the term "walls" instead of "sides," the claim does
not provide any basis upon which one of ordinary skill in the art could ascertain with any
reasonable degree of certainty whether "walls" refers back to "sides" or whether "walls" are
another distinct element of the web. Moreover, as the claim recites plural "webs," it is not
clear whether "said web" refers to one of the recited "webs" or is merely a misspelling of
"webs." Consequently, it is not clear whether the claim requires walls of more than one web
to meet in a common line or whether two sides (e.g., the left and right sides, respectively) of
one of the webs meeting in a common line (at the apex of the web) would satisfy the claim
limitation "said walls of said web meeting in a common line forming a tile cut line
therebetween."
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