Appeal No. 2001-0258 Page 6
Application No. 08/821,978
new ground of rejection pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b) to give
appellants an opportunity to respond thereto.
The obviousness rejections
We shall not sustain the examiner's 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejections of claims 10-46. For the reasons expressed below in
our new ground of rejection pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b), these
claims are indefinite. Therefore, the prior art rejections must
fall because they are necessarily based on speculative assumption
as to the meaning of the claims. See In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859,
862-63, 134 USPQ 292, 295 (CCPA 1962). It should be understood,
however, that our decision in this regard is based solely on the
indefiniteness of the claimed subject matter, and does not
reflect on the adequacy of the prior art evidence applied in
support of the rejections.
NEW GROUND OF REJECTION
Pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b), we enter the following new
ground of rejection.
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