Appeal No. 2004-0619
Application No. 10/061,140
and 9-11 stand rejected under § 103 as being unpatentable over Burr
in view of Shirai.1
We refer to the brief and to the answer for a complete
exposition of the contrary viewpoints expressed by the Appellants
and by the Examiner concerning the above noted rejections.
OPINION
We will sustain each of these rejections for the reasons
expressed in the answer and below.
It is well settled that, during examination proceedings,
claims are given their broadest reasonable interpretation
consistent with the specification. In re Hyatt, 211 F.3d 1367,
1372, 54 USPQ2d 1664, 1667 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
With this legal principle in mind, the Examiner has found that
the method and structure defined by independent claims 1 and 14
respectively, including the notch feature defined by these claims,
are indistinguishable from the method and structure, including
1On page 2 of the brief, the Appellants state that “[c]laims
1-5, 7-11, 13-17, 19 and 20 stand or fall together.” In light of
this statement, we will focus on representative independent
claim 1 in our disposition of this appeal. For completeness,
however, we also will consider and respond to the Appellants’
comments regarding the § 103 rejections of other appealed claims.
See In re McDaniel, 293 F.3d 1379, 1383, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1464-66
(Fed. Cir. 2002).
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