Appeal No. 2000-1901
Application 08/506,032
35 U.S.C. § 103 and remand the application in view of the following.
Essentially, we have concluded that the examiner has failed to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness as to any claim on
appeal.
Preliminarily, we note the following. The present application
contains a specification of over 130 pages with 67 drawing figures.
There are approximately 150 claims on appeal with 39 of these being
independent claims. The brief is approximately 200 pages long and
appears to argue each claim on appeal. The reply brief is 72 pages.
The examiner relies upon seven references to formulate a rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 103, and the answer is over 20 pages.
At page 3 of the answer, the examiner sets forth the rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 by relying upon all seven references together
to reject each claim on appeal. Beginning at this page of the
answer, the examiner has only briefly detailed some features of each
of the respective references relied upon. Initially, at least two
separate portions of Ito are discussed briefly. Since the examiner
considers this first reference as not explicitly disclosing a
certain feature, the examiner then relies upon a second, different
reference at page 4 of the answer. This practice is repeated again
by asserting that the primary reference does not disclose a
different feature and a tertiary reference is therefore found
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