Appeal No. 2001-1851
Application No. 08/815,363
Dependent claims 26, 28, 29, and 31 fall with independent claims 25 and 27.
Appellants have, at best, merely repeated limitations of the dependent claims, which
does not rise to the level of separate arguments for patentability. See 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(7):
For each ground of rejection which appellant contests and which applies
to a group of two or more claims, the Board shall select a single claim
from the group and shall decide the appeal as to the ground of rejection
on the basis of that claim alone unless a statement is included that the
claims of the group do not stand or fall together and, in the argument
under paragraph (c)(8) of this section, appellant explains why the claims
of the group are believed to be separately patentable. Merely pointing out
differences in what the claims cover is not an argument as to why the
claims are separately patentable.
Moreover, appellants have not addressed the examiner’s findings (e.g., Final
Rejection at 5-6) with respect to where the features of dependent claims 26, 28, 29, and
31 are taught by the references. Thus, even if appellants had met the requirements for
separate consideration of the claims, appellants have not shown error in the examiner’s
findings underlying the rejection.
For the foregoing reasons, we sustain the rejection of claims 25 through 29 and
31. Since we have not sustained the rejection of claim 1 or claim 16, we do not sustain
the rejection of claims 2-13 and 17-24, which incorporate the limitations of base claim 1
or 16.
We have considered all of appellants’ arguments in making our determinations.
Arguments not relied upon are deemed waived. See 37 CFR § 1.192(a) (“Any
-6-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007