Appeal No. 1998-1658
Application 08/343,876
Claims 1, 4-6, 8, and 11-13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as unpatentable over Shimizu '178 and Okuda.
Claims 7 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Shimizu '178 and Okuda as applied in the
rejection of claim 1, further in view of Yokoyama.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 17) (pages
referred to as "FR__") and the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 24)
(pages referred to as "EA__") for a statement of the Examiner's
position, and to the Appeal Brief (Paper No. 23) (pages referred
to as "Br__") and the Reply Brief (Paper No. 25) (pages referred
to as "RBr__") for Appellants' arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
Only argued limitations are addressed
We confine our analysis to issues and differences argued in
the brief. Under U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rules, an
appellant's brief is required to describe how the claims
distinctly claim the invention and to specify the particular
limitations in the rejected claims which are not described in the
prior art or rendered obvious over the prior art. See 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(8)(iv). Cf. In re Baxter Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d
388, 391, 21 USPQ2d 1281, 1285 (Fed. Cir. 1991) ("It is not the
function of this court to examine the claims in greater detail
than argued by an appellant, looking for nonobvious distinctions
over the prior art."); In re Wiechert, 370 F.2d 927, 936, 152
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