Appeal No. 2004-0644
Application No. 09/222,209
Claims 1-4, 6-7, and 9-14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Moran1 in view of Capps. Claims 5, 8, and 15 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Moran1 and Capps in view of Zellweger.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the examiner's
answer (Paper No. 16, mailed Oct. 2, 2003) for the examiner's reasoning in support of
the rejections, and to appellants’ brief (Paper No. 15, filed Jul. 21, 2003) for appellants’
arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
At the outset, we note that appellants have elected to group the claims into two
groupings with claims 1 and 2 as the representative claims. (See brief at page 3.)
Therefore, we will address the respective arguments to those claims.
CLAIM 1
From our review of the examiner’s rejection, we find that the examiner has
established a prima facie case of obviousness of the invention as recited in
3
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