Appeal No. 2002-1006 Application 09/132,351 For each ground of rejection which [A]ppellant 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, [A]ppellant 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. Furthermore, note that claims 1 and 9 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102. We will, thereby, consider the Appellant’s claims 1 and 9 as standing or falling together and we will treat claim 1 as a representative claim of that group. See also In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (“If the brief fails to meet either requirement [of 37 CFR § 1.192 (c)(7)], the Board is free to select a single claim from each group of claims subject to a common ground of rejection as representative of all claims in that group and to decide the appeal of that rejection based solely on the selected representative claim.”) Appellant argues in the brief and the reply brief that Sanders fails to teach a “group identifier” that is a “separately defined field” as recited in Appellant’s claim 1. Appellant argues that Sanders teaches directing messages to a single pre- 7Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007