Appeal No. 2003-0450
Application 09/394,039
Claims 2-4, 6-9, 11, 13, and 19-30 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Kaneko and Hyatt. 2
We refer to the final rejection (Paper No. 7) (pages
referred to as "FR__") and the replacement examiner's answer 3
(Paper No. 19) (pages referred to as "EA__") for a statement of
the examiner's rejection, and to the second appeal brief (Paper
No. 12) (pages referred to as "Br__") and reply brief (Paper
No. 17) (pages referred to as "RBr__") for a statement of
appellants' arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
Initially, we note that the examiner interprets statements
made by appellants in the description of Kaneko as the arguments
of what is not taught by Kaneko and Hyatt (EA9-10). While we
agree with the examiner that various statements in appellants'
description of Kaneko (Br8-11) refer to limitations that are not
in the claims, these are not appellants' arguments as to the
patentability of the claims. Thus, all we have to go on to
address appellants' arguments is the statement of the rejection.
2 As noted at the beginning of the opinion, we assume that
appellants' amendment overcomes the rejection of claims 5 and 10.
3 The initial examiner's answer (Paper No. 13) entered
March 13, 2002, was indicated to be defective in a remand order
(Paper No. 18) entered July 29, 2002, because it did not indicate
that an appeal conference had been held. A replacement
examiner's answer (Paper No. 19) indicating an appeal conference
was entered December 17, 2002.
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