Appeal No. 2004-1244
Application 10/085,280
subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the
invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art.
Therefore, we shall sustain the standing 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of claims 1 and 4, and claims 2, 3 and 5 through 12
which stand or fall therewith, as being unpatentable over Beusch
in view of Kaiser. As our rationale differs from that advanced
by the examiner in the explanation of the rejection set forth in
the superseding Office action (Paper No. 14), we designate our
decision as a new ground of rejection under 37 CFR § 1.196(b) to
afford the appellant a fair opportunity to react thereto.1
SUMMARY
The decision of the examiner to reject claims 1 through 12
is affirmed, with the affirmance designated as a new ground of
rejection under 37 CFR § 1.196(b).
This decision contains a new ground of rejection pursuant to
37 CFR § 1.196(b)(amended effective Dec. 1, 1997, by final rule
notice, 62 Fed. Reg. 53,131, 53,197 (Oct. 10, 1997), 1203 Off.
Gaz. Pat. & Trademark Office 63, 122 (Oct. 21, 1997)). 37 CFR
1 In the event of further prosecution, “grove” should be
changed to --groove-- in clause (e) of claim 7 and “groove”
should be changed to --grooves-- in claims 2 and 8 for
consistency with the rest of these claims, the somewhat confusing
wording in claim 9 should be clarified and the dependency of
method claim 12 should be changed from apparatus claim 6 to one
of method claims 7 through 11.
7
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