Appeal No. 2002-2083
Application No. 09/430,642
With respect to dependent claim 7, the examiner maintains that Piloto does not
teach the use of a probe and connector to couple the striplines or that the stripline is on
the surface of the second green tape stack. The examiner further maintains that the
placement of the stripline placement would have been “a mere art-recognized
functionally equivalent location for the stripline.” (See answer at page 5.) Appellants
argue that there the examiner has not shown a convincing line of reasoning for
combining the teachings of Kubota with those of Piloto since Kubota is not directed to a
dielectric waveguide. (See brief at pages 9-10.) We agree with appellants that the
examiner has not shown why it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art at the time of the invention to look to the teachings of Kubota to remedy the
deficiency in the teachings of Piloto. Therefore, we will not sustain the rejection of
dependent claim 7.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 6, 8, and 9 under 35
U.S.C. § 102 is affirmed, and the decision of the examiner to reject claims 7 and 10
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
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