Appeal No. 2002-1236
Application No. 08/359,743
unpatentable over Boudreau. Claims 31 and 32 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as being unpatentable over Boudreau in view of Simpson.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the examiner's
final rejection (Paper No. 23, mailed Jun. 7, 2000) and examiner's answer (Paper No.
29, mailed Nov. 8, 2001) for the examiner's reasoning in support of the rejections, and
to appellants’ brief (Paper No. 24, filed Mar. 28, 2001) for appellants’ arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
At the outset, we note that appellants have elected to group claims 1, 3, 4, and
31 together in a first group and claims 5, 6, 8, 9 and 32 together in a second group.
(See brief at page 8.) Therefore, we select independent claim 1 and dependent claim 5
as the representative claims from each grouping and will address appellants’ arguments
thereto.
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