Appeal No. 2003-1485
Application No. 09/885,086
Reference is made to the Examiner's Answer (Paper No. 9,
mailed January 29, 2003) for the examiner's complete reasoning in
support of the rejections, and to appellant's Brief (Paper No. 8,
filed November 18, 2002) and Reply Brief (Paper No. 10, filed
April 1, 2003) for appellant's arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
As a preliminary matter we note that appellant indicates on
page 4 of the Brief that claims 1 and 7 stand or fall together,
claims 2 and 3 stand or fall together, and claims 4 through 6 and
8 through 10 stand or fall together. As appellant likewise
argues the claims according to the proposed groupings, we will
treat the claims as falling into the three groups with claims 1,
2, and 4 as representative.
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will affirm the obviousness rejections of claims 1 through 10.
Appellant argues (Brief, page 5, and Reply Brief, page 4)
that Deitz fails to disclose that each individual shield is
bonded along its longitudinal length, as recited in claim 1. We
disagree. Deitz shows the seam for the shield three different
ways - as the two edges overlapping, for shields 16 and 16A in
3
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