Appeal No. 2001-2449
Application No. 08/637,802
fails to provide specific, substantive reasons for the separate
patentability of any claims except claims 1 and 7 (Brief, page 6;
Answer, page 2, ¶(7)). Accordingly, we limit our consideration to
claims 1 and 7 on appeal. We note that the mere reiteration of the
limitations of a dependent claim is not a substantive reason for
the separate patentability thereof (e.g., see the Brief, page 11).
See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(8)(1997). Illustrative independent claim
1 is reproduced below:
1. Fire scale resistant, work hardenable jewelry silver alloy
compositions comprising:
0.5-5.5% by weight copper;
0.07-6% by weight of a mixture of zinc and silicon, wherein
said silicon is present in the range of 0.02 to 2.0% by weight;
0.01-2.5% by weight germanium; and
at least 86% by weight silver.
The examiner has relied upon the following references as
evidence of obviousness:
Bernhard et al. (Bernhard) 5,039,479 Aug. 13, 1991
Rateau et al. (Rateau) 2 255 348 A Nov. 4, 1992
(published UK Patent Application)
The claims on appeal stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Bernhard in view of Rateau (Answer, page 5).
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007