Appeal No. 2004-1635
Application No. 10/083,915 Page 3
At the outset, we note that the examiner (answer, Page 2)
has correctly noted that appellant brings this appeal on the
basis that all of the claims stand or fall together as indicated
at page 2 of the brief. Appellant has not disagreed with this
assessment of the examiner or with the examiner’s selection of
claim 1 as representative of the appealed claims in their reply
brief. Consequently, we limit our discussion to appealed
claim 1.
A prior art reference anticipates the subject matter of a
claim when the reference discloses every feature of the claimed
invention, either explicitly or inherently (see Hazani v. Int'l
Trade Comm'n, 126 F.3d 1473, 1477, 44 USPQ2d 1358, 1361 (Fed.
Cir. 1997) and RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc.,
730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984));
however, the law of anticipation does not require that the
reference teach what the appellants are claiming, but only that
the claims on appeal "read on" something disclosed in the
reference (see Kalman v. Kimberly-Clark Corp., 713 F.2d 760, 772,
218 USPQ 781, 789 (Fed. Cir. 1983).
Anticipation is a factual determination. See In re Baxter
Travenol Labs., 952 F.2d 388, 390, 21 USPQ2d 1281, 1283 (Fed.
Cir. 1991) (citing In re Bond, 910 F.2d 831, 833, 15 USPQ2d 1566,
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