Appeal No. 2001-0421
Application 08/926,835
of Congress, present and past Directors of this agency as well as
practitioners before the PTO bar. Like few others, this problem
of increasing pendency has frustrated the missions and goals of
the Patent and Trademark Office.
The above discussed actions by the majority compound this
pendency problem and thereby militate against the missions and
goals of this agency. It is important to emphasize that the
claims before us on this appeal are identical to the claims first
filed in the Patent and Trademark Office in 1995 via parent
application Serial No. 08/532,779. Similarly, the rejections
first applied against these claims in the parent application are
identical to the prior art rejections now before us. By vacating
these prior art rejections, the majority in effect additionally
has vacated all the prosecution which has taken place since these
appealed claims were first filed in 1995.
Moreover, by making their new section 112, second paragraph,
rejection, the majority panel members compel the appellants to
now address indefiniteness issues which implicitly neither the
appellants nor the examiner (nor his conferring supervisory
patent examiner) have ever considered applicable to the claims on
appeal (and which certainly this dissenting panel member does not
consider applicable to these claims). Further, the avenues by
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