Appeal No. 2000-0412
Application No. 09/046,200
5,801,851.1 Claims 1-5 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Itoh in view of well-known prior art (for example, Tsuchiya, Patent No.
5,012,354).2
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
the appellant regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the
examiner's answer (Paper No. 11, mailed Jun. 16, 1999), the response to appellant’s
appeal brief filed Feb. 25, 2003 and the Board Remand (Paper No. 14, mailed
Aug. 29, 2002) (herein referred to as “examiner’s response”) and the supplemental
examiner's answer (Paper No. 17, mailed May 13, 2003) for the examiner's reasoning
in support of the rejections, and to the appellant's (marked up version) of the brief
(Paper No 16, filed Feb. 25, 2003) (herein referred to as “supplemental brief”),
1The examiner only lists claims 1, 2, 4 and 5 in the summary paragraph, but
addresses all five claims in the text of the rejection/correlation to the claims of U.S.
Patent 5,801,851.
2 The examiner still has not presented a clear statement of the rejection as to
the references relied upon to reject the claims. In the response to appellant’s response
to our remand, the examiner indicated in paper number 17, mailed May 13, 2003 that
the Tsuchiya reference is relied upon by the examiner as “evidential support” as to what
is common knowledge with respect to a plural guide rail system as shown in Figure
3(a). But, in the supplemental answer, the examiner stated that claims 1-5 are rejected
as "unpatentable over Itoh in view of (Tsuchiya 5,012,354, found in response to
appellant’s April 15, 1999 amendment)." (See supplemental answer at page 10.) Since
it is still unclear to us and the examiner would be required to reopen prosecution to
institute a new ground of rejection in the answer, we will treat the claims as rejected
over Itoh in view of common knowledge.
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