Appeal No. 2001-0058 Page 8
Application No. 281,815
obviousness with regard to the subject matter recited in independent claim 1, and we will
not sustain the rejection of this claim or of claims 4-6, which depend therefrom.
Independent claims 7 and 8 are directed to apparatus for creating coherent clouds
of burning matter that can be used as a military countermeasure. As pointed out by the
appellant, the examiner has not explained how the combined teachings of the five applied
references would have rendered the subject matter of claims 7 and 8 obvious. In fact,
aside from their inclusion in the statement of the rejection, claims 7 and 8 have not even
been mentioned in the Answer. From our perspective, these claims contain the same
limitations, expressed in an apparatus format, as method claim 1, and the deficiencies
pointed out above with regard to the rejection of claim 1 apply here also. The rejection of
claims 7 and 8 is not sustained.
Claims 2 and 3 stand rejected on the basis of the references applied against claim
1, considered further with Corino, which was cited for teachings concerning gelling agents.
Corino does not overcome the shortcomings in the rejection of claim 1, from which claims
2 and 3 depend, and therefore the rejection of these two claims also is not sustained.
SUMMARY
Neither rejection is sustained.
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