Appeal No. 2003-1477
Application No. 09/248,533
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Prancz ‘570 and
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Prancz ‘424.
Finally, claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over either Prancz ‘570 or Prancz ‘424 in view
of the admitted prior art (i.e., the prior art described on page
1, lines 20-25, of the subject specification).
On page 3 of the brief, the appellants state, “[f]or the
purpose of this appeal [,] Claims 4-9 shall stand or fall
together, controlled by independent Claim 4.” In light of this
statement, we will focus on claim 4, the sole independent claim
on appeal, in assessing the merits of the rejections before us.
Rather than reiterate the respective positions advocated by
the appellants and by the examiner concerning the afore-noted
rejections, we refer to the brief and to the answer3 for a
complete exposition thereof.
OPINION
2(...continued)
the examiner’s part is harmless in view of our disposition of his § 112,
second paragraph, rejection.
3 On page 1 of the answer, the examiner, by inadvertent oversight,
indicates that his answer is in response to the brief filed March 4, 2002.
The application file record clearly reveals, however, that the answer, in
fact, is in response to the corrected brief filed August 12, 2002 which was
required by the examiner in his communication mailed June 11, 2002 wherein the
March 4, 2002 brief was held to be defective. Particularly because the
substantive portions of the original and corrected briefs are identical, the
examiner’s oversight has no impact on this appeal.
4
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