Appeal No. 1998-0631
Application 07/957,990
not shown that the scope of the disputed claims is unclear.
The fact that subject matter in the claims is not shown in
figure 4 does not make the claims vague and indefinite. The
proper procedure for review of a restriction requirement is
a petition under 37 CFR § 1.144. Here, Appellant did
properly petition under 37 CFR § 1.144 for reversal of the
Examiner's withdrawal of claims as not corresponding to the
elected species, which petition was granted. At this point,
the Examiner was required to examine the claims on the
merits. However, the Examiner's subsequent rejection of
certain claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, was
held to be proper procedure by the same Group Director.
Accordingly, if Appellant is to get any meaningful review of
the Examiner's action it must be by us.
We limit our review to whether the rejected claims
correspond to the elected species represented by figure 4,
and, although we comment on the restriction requirement, we
do not decide whether the restriction requirement was
proper. The statement in the Response Letter (Paper No. 22)
that claims reciting features not shown in figure 4 "are not
readable on the elected species" (Paper No. 22), p. 1), does
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