Appeal No. 2002-1527 Page 21
Application No. 08/885,817
I. CLAIMS 14, 17, 22, 32, AND 33
"[T]o assure separate review by the Board of individual claims within each group
of claims subject to a common ground of rejection, an appellant's brief to the Board
must contain a clear statement for each rejection: (a) asserting that the patentability of
claims within the group of claims subject to this rejection do not stand or fall together,
and (b) identifying which individual claim or claims within the group are separately
patentable and the reasons why the examiner's rejection should not be sustained." In
re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (citing 37
C.F.R. §1.192(c)(7) (2001)). "If the brief fails to meet either requirement, the Board is
free to select a single claim from each group of claims subject to a common ground of
rejection as representative of all claims in that group and to decide the appeal of that
rejection based solely on the selected representative claim." Id., 63 USPQ2d at 1465.
Here, the appellants stipulate that claims 14 and 17 stand or fall together.
(Supp. Appeal Br. at 5.) We select claim 14 as representative thereof. With this
representation in mind, we address the point of contention.
The examiner reasons, "Aziz discusses establishing and joining closed (private)
multicast groups . . . (col 14, lines 4-17), thus inferring [sic] that entities outside of the
closed groups would be considered public groups. . . ." (Supp. Examiner's Answer
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