Appeal No. 2004-0622 Page 5
Application No. 09/875,602
The prior art rejections
We shall not sustain the examiner's rejections of claims 1-4 and 6 under 35
U.S.C. § 102 as being anticipated by Bock and claims 7-11 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Laverick in view of Bock. For the reasons expressed below in
the new ground of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, these claims are
indefinite. Therefore, the prior art rejections must fall because they are necessarily
based on speculative assumption as to the meaning of the claims. See In re Steele,
305 F.2d 859, 862-63, 134 USPQ 292, 295 (CCPA 1962). It should be understood,
however, that our decision in this regard is based solely on the indefiniteness of the
claimed subject matter, and does not reflect on the adequacy of the prior art evidence
applied in support of the rejections.
NEW GROUNDS OF REJECTION
Pursuant to our authority under 37 CFR § 1.196(b), we make the following new
grounds of rejection.
Claims 1-4 and 6-11 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as
being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim what appellants
regard as their invention.
Each of independent claims 1 and 7 recites a doctor blade having an edge which
contacts the soft surface of a roller, said edge having an “edge radius” in the range of
2 mm to 10 mm. The term “radius” is generally understood in the geometric sense to
mean “any straight line extending from the center to the periphery of a circle or sphere”
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