Appeal No. 2003-1967
Application No. 08/970,889
Therefore, we will not sustain the Examiner's rejection of these
claims for the same reasons as above.
Claims 17-20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Barber in view of Yeo and Shibata.
At the outset, we note that Appellants state on page 6 of
the brief that claims be considered separately patentable.
However, in the brief and reply brief, we note that Appellants
argued claims 17-20 as a group. No other claims are argued.
37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7) (July 1, 2001) as amended at 62 Fed. Reg.
53196 (October 10, 1997), which was controlling at the time of
Appellants filing the brief, states:
For each ground of rejection which [A]ppellants contest
and which applies to a group of two or more claims, the
Board shall select a single claims from the group and
shall decide the appeal as to the ground of rejection
on the basis of that claim alone unless a statement is
included that the claims of the group do not stand or
fall together and, in the argument under paragraph
(c)(8) of this section, Appellants explains why the
claims of the group are believed to be separately
patentable. Merely pointing out differences in what
the claims cover is not an argument as to why the
claims are separately patentable.
We will consider Appellants' claims 17-19 as standing or falling
together and we will treat claim 17 as a representative claim of
that group. See also In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63
USPQ2d 1462, 1465 (Fed. Cir. 2002) ("If the brief fails to meet
99
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007