Appeal No. 2003-1303 2
Application No. 09/351,166
from a reading of independent claims 1, 6 and 10, which appear in Appendix A to
appellants’ main brief.1
The references relied upon by the examiner in the final rejection are:
Hakala et al. (Hakala) 5,090,846 Feb. 25, 1992
Parviainen et al. (Parviainen) 5,927,909 Jul. 27, 1999
Claims 1-12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as being
indefinite.
Claims 1-3, 5, 6, 8 and 9 stand further rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
being anticipated by Hakala.
Claims 4, 7 and 10-12 stand further rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Hakala in view of Parviainen.
Reference is made to appellants’ main and reply briefs (Paper Nos. 21 and 24)
and to the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 23) for the respective positions of appellants
and the examiner regarding the merits of these rejections.
The 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, rejection
The examiner lists four reasons for rejecting the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 112,
second paragraph. First, it is not clear to the examiner what the word “structures” refers
1While the term “the at least one support member of the drilling apparatus” in
claim 2 lack a proper antecedent, we understand this term as referring back to “the at
least one support member” of claim 1. Although this informality does not obscure the
metes and bounds of claims 1 and 2, it nonetheless is deserving of correction upon
return of this application to the Technology Center.
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