Appeal No. 1999-2506 Application No. 08/545,254 THE REJECTION Claims 7, 9, 10, 13, 15 through 20, 22 through 24, 26 through 28, 31through 38, 40 and 41 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Hasegawa in view of Palackal, Matsumoto and Brekner.2 3 OPINION We have carefully considered all of the arguments advanced by the appellants and the examiner and agree with the examiner essentially for the reasons set forth in the Answer that the rejection of the claims under § 103(a) is well founded. Accordingly, we affirm this rejection and add the following comments for emphasis. As an initial matter the appellants state that, “[c]laims 7, 9, 10, 134 [sic, 13], 15- 24, 26-28, 31 and 33-41 will stand or fall independently of each other.” See Brief, page 5. The only argument presented with respect to any of the dependent claims however, is a recitation of the limitation of the claimed subject matter followed by the sentence, “[t]his aspect of the present invention is neither disclosed nor suggested by any of the cited 2The rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first and second paragraphs have been withdrawn. 3Although Palackal has a publication date of December 14, 1994, subsequent to appellants’ priority date, said priority date has not been perfected. Accordingly, Palackal is available as a reference. We further note that a counterpart of Palackal has issued in the United States. See US Patent No. 5, 401,817 bearing a filing date of May 20, 1993. 4Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007