Appeal No. 2003-1173
Application No. 09/991,855
Claims 1-4, 17-19, 23-28, 41-47, 51-53, 62, and 65 have been canceled.
Claim 71 stands allowed. Claims 12 and 14 are objected to as depending from a
rejected claim. The rejection of claims 13 and 22 has been withdrawn by the examiner
subsequent to the final rejection, and the claims stand objected to as depending from a
rejected claim.
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 6) and the Examiner’s Answer (Paper
No. 8) for a statement of the examiner’s position and to the Brief (Paper No. 7) for
appellants’ position with respect to the claims which stand rejected.
OPINION
Grouping of Claims
Appellants submit a proposed grouping of claims. (Brief at 6.) However, we will
select a representative claim, when appropriate, based on arguments presented in
support of separate patentability. See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7). See also In re McDaniel,
293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (“If the brief fails to meet
either requirement [of 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)], 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.”).
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