Appeal No. 2003-0494
Application No. 09/176,012
it is the position of the applicants that each independent claim in the
application, claims 1, 15 and 23, stands on it own merits for consideration of
review of the Final Rejection. Except where discussed separately below,
dependent claims may be grouped with their respective independent claim.
37 C.F.R. § 1.192(c) (7) (July 1, 2001) as amended at 62 Fed. Reg. 53196
(October 10, 1997), which was controlling at the time of appellant filing the brief, states:
For each ground of rejection which appellant contests and which applies
to a group of two or more claims, the Board shall select a single claim from the
group and shall decide the appeal as to the ground of rejection on the basis of
that claim alone unless a statement is included that the claims of the group do
not stand or fall together and in the argument under paragraph (c) (8) of this
section, appellant explains why the claims of the group are believed to be
separately patentable. Merely pointing out the differences in what the claims
cover is not an argument as to why the claims are separately patentable.
We will, thereby, consider the appellants’ claims in nine groups. Group A consists claim
15 and claim 203 and we will consider claim 15 as representative of that group. Group
B consists of claim 16. Group C consists of Claims 17 through 19 and we will consider
claim 17 as representative of that group. Group D consists of claim 21. Group E
consists of claim 22. Group F consists of claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 9 through 12 and 14 and we
will treat claim 1 as a representative claim of that group. Group G consists of claims 23
through 27 and 29 and we will treat claim 23 as a representative claim of that group.
Group H consists of claims 3 though 5, 8 and 13 and we will consider claim 3 to be
representative of that group, Group I consists of claim 28.
3 We do not consider appellants statement concerning claim 20, on page 15 of the brief, to constitute an
argument as to why claim 20 is separately patentable, rather we consider it to be a statement pointing out
a difference in what the claims cover. Accordingly, we group claim 20 with claim 15.
-5–
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007