Appeal No. 2003-0503 8
Application No. 09/687,894
USPQ2d 1525, 1528 (Fed. Cir. 1987) and In re Burckel, 592 F.2d 1175, 1178-79, 201
USPQ 67, 70 (CCPA 1979).
Rejection (3)
With regard to the examiner’s rejection of dependent claims 3, 5-7, 13 and 14 as
being unpatentable over Metz, appellant does not expressly challenge the examiner’s
findings of fact and conclusions of obviousness regarding these dependent claims as set
forth on page 4 of the final rejection. In fact, appellant does not contend that these
dependent claims recite any additional distinctions over Metz beyond those allegedly
found in the base claims from which they depend. Instead, appellant is content with
asserting on page 9 of the main brief that these dependent claims are patentable based
on their dependency on base claims 1 or 10, whose patentability was argued earlier in the
main brief. Such an argument is not tantamount to an argument that these dependent
claims are patentable separately of the claims from which they depend. In short, appellant
has failed to separately argue the patentability of these dependent claims with any
reasonable specificity. They therefore fall with base claims 1 and 10. See In re Nielson,
816 F.2d at 1570, 2 USPQ2d at 1528 and In re Burckel, 592 F.2d at 1178-79, 201 USPQ
at 70.
Rejection (4)
We will not sustain the standing rejection of claim 15 as being anticipated by
Gorczyca. Claim 15 requires, among other things, that each of the plurality of weighted
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