Appeal No. 2002-1908
Application 09/097,013
feeder described in one of the appellants’ Japanese priority
applications as being somewhat problematic (see column 1, lines
26 through 57) and goes on to disclose and claim an allegedly
improved component feeder differing from that disclosed and
claimed in the instant application.
Against this background, the examiner has rejected appealed
claims 1 through 3, 5 through 7 and 9 through 11 under § 102(f)
because
[t]he claimed invention was first invented by the
three inventors of Takahashi et al. ‘676. While the
earliest filing date of Takahashi et al ‘676 is after
the earliest filing date of this case, the fact is that
the inventors of Takahashi et al ‘676 signed a
declaration when they filed the U.S. national
application, in the same manner as the inventors of
this application have, that they were the first to
invent the claimed subject matter. Since the
applicants in Takahashi et al ‘676, their assignee
(same as in this application) and their U.S. legal
representatives (same as in this application) permitted
Takahashi et al ‘676 to issue without notifying the
USPTO that the inventors of Takahashi et al ‘676 were
not the first inventors, it is reasonable to assume
that the inventors of Takahashi et al ‘676 are the
first to invent their claimed subject matter [final
rejection, page 2].
To the extent that it can be understood, the examiner’s
logic does not even remotely support the proposition that the
appellants derived the subject matter set forth in appealed
claims 1 through 3, 5 through 7 and 9 through 11 from the
5
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