Appeal No. 2002-0489
Application 08/831,731
OPINION
Grouping of claims
Appellant argues independent claim 1 as representative of
claims 1-3, 5, 6, 8, 12-14, 31, and 33-36 rejected under § 102(a)
over Philips. Thus, the claims in this group stand or fall
together with claim 1. However, since the argument section of
the brief also mentions claims 2 and 31, these claims will also
be addressed to the extent they are argued.
Appellant argues independent claims 16 and 58 as
representative of claims 4, 7, 9-11, 15-30, 32, and 37-63
rejected under § 103(a). Since claims 16-18, 20, 21, 23, 27-29,
40-43, and 53 stand rejected over Philips and Burrows, we treat
this group of claims to stand or fall together with claim 16.
Since claims 44-46, 48, 49, and 58-60 stand rejected over Philips
and Rogers, we treat this group of claims to stand or fall
together with claim 58.
The obviousness rejections of the dependent claims over
additional references are not argued. Since 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(8)(iii) (2000) requires the appeal brief to point out
the error in each rejection and appellant has not argued the
separate patentability of these claims, these claims fall
together with the representative claim (i.e., they are
unpatentable if the representative claim is unpatentable). The
claims do not necessarily stand together with the representative
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