Appeal No. 2004-0616
Application 09/692,982
Appendix attached to the reply brief (Paper No. 16, filed June
13, 2003).1
The prior art references of record relied upon by the
examiner as evidence of obviousness of the claimed subject matter
are:
Ripka 4,467,780 Aug. 28, 1984
Chase et al. (Chase) 5,359,989 Nov. 1, 1994
Reinke et al. (Reinke) 6,109,254 Aug. 29, 2000
Claims 1, 4 through 6, 8 through 11, 14 through 16 and 18
through 20 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Ripka.
1 Although the examiner’s answer (page 2) indicates that
“[t]he copy of the appealed claims contained in the Appendix to
the brief is correct” (emphasis added), we find no such Appendix
in the record associated with the brief (Paper No. 13) and
further note that appel- lants have highlighted in the reply
brief (Paper No. 16) that such Appendix was inadvertently omitted
from the brief. Thus, we are at somewhat of a loss to understand
how the examiner could have reviewed such a non-existent paper
and subsequently urged that the content thereof was correct. In
point of fact, even the claims in the Appendix attached to the
reply brief are not correct. For example, in claim 1, line 2,
“eternally” should be -- externally --; in claim 1, line 9,
“ration” should be -- ratio --; and claim 14 should depend from
claim 11, not claim 1 as shown in the Appendix.
3
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