Appeal No. 2000-1103
Application No. 08/576,367
The Examiner, in the Answer, rejected claims 18, 19, 21, 23, 24, 26 and 28 to 32
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the combination of Wuensch,
Milinkovic and Koseki and Reichert. The Examiner added Hashiguchi to the combination
of Wuensch, Milinkovic and Koseki and Reichert to reject claims 20, 22 and 27 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a). The Examiner added Geissler to the combination of Wuensch, Milinkovic
and Koseki and Reichert to reject claim 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). (Answer, pp. 3-4).
Appellants have indicated, that the claims should stand or fall in the following
groups: Group I (claims 18 to 27 and 31), Group II (claims 28 to 30), and Group III (claim
32). However, we note that Appellants’ groupings of the claims mix statutory classes of
invention. Accordingly, we will groups the claims based on their appropriate statutory class,
process claims Group I (claims 18 to 30) and product claims Group II (claims 31 and 32).
We will limit our consideration to claims 18, 31 and 32 as representative of the claims on
appeal.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the Examiner and
Appellants concerning the above-noted rejections, we refer to the Answer and the Brief. For
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