Appeal No. 2002-0514
Application No. 08/886,388 Page 3
We refer to appellants’ brief and to the examiner's answer
and final rejection for an exposition of the respective
viewpoints expressed by appellants and the examiner concerning
the rejections.
OPINION
We shall sustain the examiner’s § 112, second paragraph
rejection. Moreover, since we can not ascertain the scope of
the claims before us on this record, we procedurally reverse the
§ 112, first paragraph and § 103 rejections advanced by the
examiner.1 Our reasoning follows.
Appellants state that the appealed claims “stand or fall
alone as one group” (brief, page 4). The appealed claims have
not been separately argued with respect to the examiner’s
rejection of the appealed claims under the second paragraph of
35 U.S.C. § 112. Consequently, we select claim 44 as the
representative claim for our consideration of that ground of
rejection. See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7 and 8)(2000).
A principal purpose of the second paragraph of § 112 is to
provide those who would endeavor, in future enterprises, to
approach the area circumscribed by the claims of a patent, with
1 We emphasize that this reversal is a technical reversal
rather than one based on the merits.
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