Appeal No. 2003-1155 Page 2
Application No. 08/821,995
BACKGROUND
The appellants' invention relates to an agricultural irrigation line. A copy of the
claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants' amended brief (Paper
No. 13, filed March 8, 1999).
This application was previously before this panel of the Board of Patent Appeals
and Interferences in Appeal No. 2000-0288. On February 20, 2001, we issued a
decision (Paper No. 17) affirming the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1 to 3, 5
to 10 and 12 to 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 and reversing the decision of the examiner to
reject claims 4 and 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.1 In addition, we remanded this
application to the examiner to consider the patentability of the subject matter of claims 4
and 11 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. In making this remand, we noted that 37 CFR
§ 1.196(e) provided that
[w]henever a decision of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences
includes or allows a remand, that decision shall not be considered a final
decision. When appropriate, upon conclusion of proceedings on remand before
the examiner, the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences may enter an order
otherwise making its decision final.
and that regarding any affirmed rejection, 37 CFR § 1.197(b) provided that
1 Claims 1 to 13 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Malott (U.S.
Patent No. 3,929,197, issued Dec. 30, 1975) in view of Di Palma (U.S. Patent No. 3,984,052, issued Oct.
5, 1976). Claims 14 to 17 were rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Malott in view
of Di Palma as applied to claims 1 and 9 above, and further in view of Unruh (U.S. Patent No. 4,626,984,
issued Dec. 2, 1986.)
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