Appeal No. 2003-1551
Application No. 09/550,713
focused his attention on the lack of a half-wave plate in
Mitsutake, the examiner’s complete reasoning in support of the
rejection makes no sense.
Since the examiner’s findings with respect to independent
claims 1, 7 and 9 fail to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness, we do not sustain the examiner’s rejection of these
claims or of claims 2, 3, 5, 8 and 10 which depend therefrom.
With respect to dependent claims 4 and 6, although these claims
are rejected using the additional teachings of Marcellin-Dibon,
Marcellin-Dibon does not overcome the deficiencies in the basic
rejection discussed above. Therefore, we also do not sustain the
examiner’s rejection of claims 4 and 6.
In summary, we have not sustained either of the
examiner’s rejections of the claims on appeal. Therefore, the
decision of the examiner rejecting claims 1-10 is reversed.
However, we make the following new rejection using our authority
under 37 CFR § 41.50(b).
Independent claims 1, 7 and 9 are rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over the collective
teachings of Mitsutake and the admitted prior art. With respect
to claim 1, a polarized beam splitter (PBS) reads on PBS 26 in
Figure 5 of Mitsutake. A delay means for creating a half
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