Appeal No. 2004-0906
Application No. 09/571,896
C. The Rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
We adopt the examiner’s findings of fact from Crispen
regarding the rejection of claim 10 (Answer, page 4). Since
appellants have not separately argued the rejection of this claim
(see the Brief and Reply Brief in their entirety), we summarily
affirm the examiner’s rejection.
With regard to the rejection of claims 4 and 8 under section
103(a) over Bumgarner or Crispen, the examiner concludes that
substituting a steel core belt for the ropes shown by the
references “would have been an obvious substitution of equivalents”
(Answer, page 4). Appellants argue that the examiner offers no
support for this assertion that coated steel belts were considered
equivalent to elevator ropes (Brief, page 13; Reply Brief, page 6).
We agree with appellants that, since the examiner has not offered
any support for this assertion of equivalency, the examiner has
not met the initial burden of establishing a prima facie case of
obviousness. See In re Lee, 277 F.3d 1338, 1344-45, 61 USPQ2d
1430, 1434-45 (Fed. Cir. 2002). Therefore we reverse the
examiner’s rejection of claims 4 and 8 under section 103(a) over
Bumgarner or Crispen.3
3In the event of further or continuing prosecution before
(continued...)
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