Appeal No. 2004-2250
Application No. 09/542,154
claimed limitations are absent in Shuping. Therefore we sustain
the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 3 and 28.
Regarding claims 4-7, 10-15, 27, 29 and 31, Appellants
merely repeat the same arguments stated above with respect to
claim 1 and add that no further suggestion is found in Barnett,
Gerba, Nielsen and Oran (suppl. brief, pages 8-11). The Examiner
responds to each argument by pointing to the specific portions of
each of these references that suggest the modifications proposed
in the rejection (answer, pages 17-20). Since Appellants have
not identified any clear flaw in the reasoning of the examiner,
nor have they pointed to any evidence of record indicating that
the findings of the Examiner are unsupportable, we find the
Examiner’s reliance on the combination of the references to be
reasonable and sufficient to support a prima facie case of
obviousness. Therefore we sustain the 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection
of claim 4 over Brown, Kikinis, Namma, Humpleman and Barnett, of
claims 5-7, 10, 12-15, 27 and 31 over Brown, Kikinis, Namma,
Humpleman and Gerba, of claim 11 over Brown, Kikinis, Namma,
Humpleman, Gerba and Barnett and of claim 29 over Brown, Kikinis,
Namma, Humpleman, Gerba, Nielsen and Oran.
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