Appeal No. 2003-1557 Page 2
Application No. 09/817,884
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a method of increasing service intervals of a
gas turbine engine by increasing temperature margins (specification, page 1). A copy
of the claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants’ brief.
The examiner has not rejected the claims on the basis of prior art under 35
U.S.C. § 102 or 103.1
The following rejections are before us for review.
Claims 1-3 and 8-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 101 as being inoperative
and thus lacking utility.2
Claims 1-3 and 8-14 also stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph,
as containing subject matter which was not described in the specification in such a way
as to enable one skilled in the art to make and/or use the invention.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
the appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the final
rejection and answer (Paper Nos. 10 and 15) for the examiner's complete reasoning in
1 In this regard, we note that it is not apparent to us why “[t]he condition of the disclosure
precludes a complete examination,” as indicated on page 4 of the final rejection. In light of our disposition
of the rejections before us, it would appear that, upon return of this application to the primary examiner, a
complete examination of the subject matter of this application is in order.
2 We, like appellants on page 1 of their brief, note that the final rejection did not expressly include
a rejection of the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 101 but, also like appellants, conclude from the final rejection
as a whole that this was the intent of the examiner’s discussion on pages 2-4 of the final rejection.
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