Appeal No. 1999-2281
Application No. 08/621,521
we cannot affirm the obviousness rejection of claims 5, 6, 8,
18, 19, and 26 over Gill.
Regarding the obviousness rejection of claims 1, 4
through 8, 11, 12, 17 through 20, 22, 26, and 28 over Matsuura
in view of Gill, appellants (Brief, page 10) take issue with
the examiner's statement that "various differences exist
between these
references and the rejected claims, yet merely states that the
differences would have been the obvious result of routine
experimentation and optimization." This argument relates only
to claims 5, 6, 8, 18, 19, and 26. As explained above, such
reasoning is improper and fails to establish a prima facie
case
of obviousness. Therefore, we will reverse the rejection of
claims 5, 6, 8, 18, 19, and 26 over Matsuura in view of Gill.
For the remaining claims appellants merely contend
(Brief, page 10) that neither Matsuura nor Gill is prior art
to the present claims. As indicated above, Gill is prior art.
Further, the filing date of Matsuura antedates appellants'
earliest priority date of September 15, 1995. Therefore,
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007