Appeal No. 2002-1163
Application 09/393,374
Under the provisions of 37 CFR 1.196(b), we enter the
following new ground of rejection against appellant’s claims 1
through 14:
Claims 1 through 14 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112,
second paragraph, for the reasons explained above, as being
indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly
claim that which appellant regards as the invention.
Turning to the examiner's rejection of the appealed claims
under 35 U.S.C. 103(a) based on Evans in view of Turner,
Richilano and Hannon, we again point out that the claims before
us contain unclear language which renders the subject matter
thereof indefinite for reasons stated supra as part of our new
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph. Accordingly,
we find that it is not possible to apply this prior art to these
claims in deciding the question of obviousness under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 without resorting to considerable speculation and
conjecture as to the meaning of the questioned limitations in the
claims. This being the case, we are constrained to reverse the
examiner's rejection of claims 1 through 14 under 35 U.S.C.
103(a) in light of the holding in In re Steele, 305 F.2d 859,
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007