Appeal No. 2004-2346 Page 2
Application No. 09/876,519
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a sunroof assembly for a vehicle. A copy of
the claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants’ brief.
The examiner relied upon the following prior art references of record in rejecting
the appealed claims:
Minnick, Jr. (Minnick) 3,657,992 Apr. 25, 1972
Rich 4,787,665 Nov. 29, 1988
Racine et al. (Racine) 5,464,267 Nov. 7, 1995
Pokorney et al. (Pokorney) 5,988,839 Nov. 23, 1999
Staser et al. (Staser) 6,305,740 Oct. 23, 2001
(filed Aug. 24, 2000)
The following rejections are before us for review.1, 2
Claims 1, 2 and 4 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Staser in view of Racine.
Claim 6 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over
Staser in view of Minnick.
Claims 9, 10, 12 and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Staser in view of Rich.
1 According to the examiner, the rejection under the second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112 was
overcome by the amendment after final. See Paper No. 6.
2 Although the examiner only addresses rejections of claims 1, 6, 9, 10 and 17 in the answer, we
presume that this is because appellants’ brief only addresses rejections of these claims and simply groups
the remaining claims with claim 1, claim 9 or claim 17. We thus presume that the appellant did not intend
to withdraw the appeal with regard to claims 4, 7, 8, 11-14, 16, 18 and 20 and that the examiner intended
to maintain the rejections of these claims. In light of our disposition of these rejections, infra, appellants
are not prejudiced by our treatment of these claims as being involved in this appeal.
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