Appeal No. 2004-0120
Application No. 09/898,334
outside surface of the back member and/or spine connecting means
(Brief, page 2).
Appellant states that the claims should be considered in two
groups as grouped in the two rejections under appeal (Brief,
pages 4-5). We construe this statement as meaning that the
claims stand or fall together for each ground of rejection, and
thus we select one claim from each ground of rejection and decide
the rejection on the basis of this claim alone. See 37 CFR
§ 1.192(c)(7)(2000); and In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63
USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002). A copy of illustrative
independent claim 1 is attached as an Appendix to this decision.
The examiner relies upon the following references as
evidence of obviousness:
Lazar 4,589,685 May 20, 1986
Ong 5,876,143 Mar. 2, 1999
Dottel 5,971,650 Oct. 26, 1999
Claims 1-18 and 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Dottel in view of Lazar (Answer, page 3,
referring to the rejection set forth in the final Office action
dated Nov. 5, 2002, Paper No. 6). Claim 19 stands rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Dottel in view of Lazar
and Ong (Answer, page 4; see Paper No. 6). We affirm the
examiner’s rejections on appeal essentially for the reasons
2
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