Appeal No. 2002-1214
Application No. 09/062,046
For the reasons stated above, the rejection of claims 1, 2, 21, 25, 38 and 39
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) is affirmed.
II.
The Examiner rejected claims 26, 33 to 37 and 45 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as obvious over Miller. We select claim 26 as the representative claim for this
rejection.
Claim 264 describes the heat members of the apparatus as including an
electrical heat member. The Examiner concluded that electrical heat members were
equivalent to infrared heat members and the substitution on one for another would
have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art. (Answer, pp. 4-5).
Appellants’ arguments, Brief pages 12 to 14, do not specifically challenge that
Examiner’s conclusion with regard to the substitution of electrical heat members for
infrared heat members. Consequently, we affirm the rejection for the reasons
presented by the Examiner.
III.
The Examiner rejected claims 3 to 8, 10, 11, 13 to 15, 17 and 40 to 44 under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over the combination of Miller and Bielfeldt.
4 Claim 26 further defines the subject matter of claim 2 which further defines the
subject matter of claim 1.
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