Appeal No. 1998-3094
Application No. 08/550,968
claims 37 and 42 do not stand or fall together, but make no
separate argument regarding the patentability of these claims.
The appellants also state that dependent claims 44, 45, 47 and
48 stand or fall separately, see id., but do not provide an
explanation as to why the appellants consider these claims to
be separately patentable over the Shin reference taken alone.
Accordingly, we limit our discussion to one claim, i.e., claim
37. See In re Ochiai, 71 F.3d 1565, 1566 n.2, 37 USPQ2d 1127,
1129 n.2 (Fed. Cir. 1995); 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(1995).
The appellants’ claims require that the polyolefin is
crystalline. The term “crystalline polyolefin” is not defined
in the appellants’ specification. One of the two polyolefins
which the appellants disclose as being typically used in their
solution is polyethylene (specification, page 5, lines 19-20),
which is a semicrystalline polymer having a crystallinity of
35-80%. Accordingly, we consider polyethylene homopolymers,2
in general, to fall within the scope of “crystalline
polyolefin” as that term is used by the appellants.
Shin discloses a solution for flash-spinning
2 See 17 Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology 708, 728 (John
Wiley & Sons 4 ed. 1996).th
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