Appeal No. 2001-2646 Page 12
Application No. 08/463,951
prosecute the invention of [Group] III.” See Paper No. 7, page 4. Thus,
Appellants were apparently on notice in August 1994 of the need to file one or
more divisional applications in order to pursue all of the claims in the original
application. Appellants, however, did not file the instant divisional application
until June 5, 1995, roughly ten months after they were put on notice of the need
to do so. Since Appellants were on notice of the need to file a divisional to
pursue the instant claims as of August 1994, yet did not file until June 1995, they
are responsible for about ten months’ worth of the delay in the instant application.
In addition, when Appellants did get around to filing the instant application,
they filed it with a specification that was missing page 7 and had an illegible page
6; for this reason, the PTO initially refused to accord the application a filing date.
See Paper No. 2, mailed July 24, 1995. Appellants’ filing of a defective
specification resulted in the need for a petition to be accorded a filing date, which
precipitated a chain of events that resulted in the instant application not being
accorded its filing date, and forwarded for examination, until March 18, 1997.
See Paper No. 7, mailed March 18, 1997. While not all of this delay is directly
attributable to the defective specification, Appellants must share in the
responsibility for the delay.
Finally, and most egregiously, Appellants neglected to respond to an
Office action in the present application, allowing it to go abandoned. See Paper
No. 9, mailed January 6, 1998. Appellants then waited nearly twenty-one months
before filing a petition to revive the application and restore it to pending status.
See Paper No. 10, filed Sept. 30, 1999. Even then, the first petition was filed
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