Appeal No. 2005-0108
Application No. 10/099,828
persuasive, and we will sustain the rejection of dependent claim 3 and claims 4 and 9
which appellant has elected to group therewith. (Brief at page 5.)
With respect to dependent claim 7, appellant argues that the USPTO cannot
disregard the corresponding structure disclosed in appellant’s specification when
addressing means plus function limitations in a claimed invention. While we agree with
appellant that the examiner cannot disregard the means plus function limitations in a
claimed invention when addressing the claim in a rejection, we do not find that appellant
has identified any error in the examiner’s application of the prior art. From our review of
the examiner’s rejection, the examiner has clearly identified what teachings in Burns
and Papadopoulos correlate to the claimed limitations. Furthermore, appellant admits
that the field devices of Burns are of the type used by appellant (Brief at page 6) and
that the powering of these devices by the communication loop was done in the prior art
(Brief at page 9), but that there were “technical difficulties” in powering the field devices
(Brief at page 10). Therefore, we can at most speculate that it is the “means for
providing power . . .” which appellant’s contest. We find no specific argument thereto
and from our review of appellant’s specification, we find no specific structure disclosed
thereto. Since we cannot speculate or rationalize as to the basis of appellant’s
argument, we will sustain the prima facie case which we find the examiner has set forth
in the statement of the rejection.
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