Appeal No. 2003-0506 Page 3 Application No. 09/264,766 Claims 1-14 and 17-45 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over U.S. Patent No. 5,594,776 ("Dent") and U.S. Patent No. 5,644,568 ("Ayerst"). Claims 15 and 16 stand rejected under § 103(a) as obvious over Dent; Ayerst; and U.S. Patent No. 5,822,310 ("Chennakeshu"). OPINION "[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, "[i]ndependent [c]laims 1, 17, 23, 33, and 36 (Group I) may be considered as standing or falling together." (Appeal Br. at 3.)Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007