Appeal No. 2004-0581
Application No. 09/041,105
The references set forth below are relied upon by the
examiner as evidence of obviousness:
Yoshioka et al. (Yoshioka) 4,314,268 Feb. 2, 1982
Akcasu 4,644,383 Feb. 17, 1987
Kihara et al. (Kihara) 5,286,986 Feb. 15, 1994
Shimizu et al. (Shimizu) 59-126662 Jul. 21, 1984
(published Japanese Kokai Patent Application)
Claims 1, 3 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Yoshioka, and claim 2 is correspondingly
rejected over this reference and further in view of Akcasu.
Claims 10 and 11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Shimizu, and claim 12 is correspondingly
rejected over this reference and further in view of Kihara.
As indicated on page 4 of the brief, the appellants have
grouped and argued separately only the independent claims on
appeal. That is, none of the appealed dependent claims have been
separately grouped and argued, not withstanding the fact that
dependent claims 2 and 12 have been separately rejected by the
examiner. It follows that, in assessing the merits of the above
noted rejections, we need focus only on independent claims 1 and
10.
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