Appeal No. 2002-1191
Application No. 09/101,175
Appellants’ argument regarding the teachings of Furutani alone does not properly address
the rejection provided by the Examiner.
The Examiner rejected claims 30 and 34 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
obvious over the combination of Makino, Furutani and either Holfelder or Friese. The
Examiner also rejected claim 31 as unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over
the combination of Makino, Furutani, Murase and/or Mase. Appellants argue that the
addition of Holfelder and Friese or Murase and Mase “do not cure the deficiencies of the
Makino patent.” (Brief, p. 9; Reply Brief, p. 12). In other words, the claims are patentable
for the reasons presented in the above discussed rejection. The Examiner has presented
reasonable arguments as to why the invention of the claims 30, 31 and 34 are unpatentable.
The Appellants have not rebutted the Examiner’s position that the additional limitations of
claims 30, 31 and 34 are unpatentable. Thus, for the reasons stated above and in the
Answer, the rejections are affirmed.
Based on our consideration of the totality of the record before us, having evaluated
the prima facie case of obviousness in view of Appellants’ arguments, we conclude that the
subject matter of claims 21 to 24, 27 to 35, 37 and 40 to 44 would have been obvious to a
person of ordinary skill in the art from the combined teachings of the cited prior art for the
reasons stated above and in the Answer.
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