Appeal No. 2002-2013
Application 09/036,699
generalities. In re Freed, 425 F.2d at 787, 165 USPQ at 571. Here, the examiner has failed to set
forth sufficient evidence in support of an obviousness rejection.
For the foregoing reasons, the rejection of claims 22, 23 and 25 as unpatentable over
Barrett cannot be sustained.
C. The Obviousness Rejection Over Barrett and Hirai
The examiner has rejected claims 11-15 and 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being obvious
over the combined teachings of Barrett and Hirai. Claim 29 depends from claim 9 and each of
claims 11-15 depends, directly or indirectly, from claim 29. Accordingly, claim 29 includes all
the limitations of claim 9 and each of claims 11-15 includes all the limitations of claim 29.
In Section B above, we have discussed the examiner’s rejection of claim 9 as being
obvious over Barrett and found that it has no merit. The examiner has applied Hirai only to
account for the additional features recited in dependent claims 29 and 11. Thus, as is presented
by the examiner, the addition of Hirai does not make up for the above-noted deficiencies with
respect to Barrett in connection with independent claim 9. As for claims 12-15, the examiner
further relies on Barrett to account for the features added by each of these claims relative to
claim 9. However, the deficiencies of Barrett with respect to the features of independent claim 9
still remain. Accordingly, the rejection of claims 11-15 and 29 as unpatentable over Barrett and
Hirai cannot be sustained.
Conclusion
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