Appeal No. 2003-0695 Page 4
Application No. 09/732,014
substantially the reasons set forth by the examiner in the
answer. We add the following for emphasis.
Appellants state that “the claims stand or fall together”
(brief, page 4). Consequently, we select claim 36 as the
representative claim for each of the examiner’s stated rejections
and limit our discussion to that representative claim in deciding
this appeal as to each ground of rejection before us.3
Appellants advance the same basic argument against each of
the separately stated rejections of the examiner. In that
regard, appellants do not specifically dispute the examiner’s
determination that McAlpin discloses the formation of articles
from copolymer films made from propylene together with at least
one other co-monomer such as 1-hexene using a metallocene
catalyst and amounts of comonomer corresponding to the
3 While appellants refer to the third monomer of claims 16
and 52 in the reply brief in an attempt at asserting a product
difference, we decide this appeal based on representative claim
36. See In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1465
(Fed. Cir. 2002) (“[i]f the brief fails to meet either
requirement, the Board is free to select a single claim from each
group of claims subject to a common ground of rejection as
representative of all claims in that group and to decide the
appeal of that rejection based solely on the selected
representative claim”).
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