Appeal No. 2005-0239
Application No. 10/145,421
canceled. See the Advisory Action dated December 23, 2003.
APPEALED SUBJECT MATTER
Appellants state that “[t]he claims stand or fall together.”
See the Brief, page 3. However, as the court in In re McDaniel,
293 F.3d 1379,1384, 63 USPQ2d 1462, 1465-66 (Fed. Cir. 2002)
held, this statement alone does not give the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office
carte blanche to ignore the distinctions between
separate grounds of rejection and to select the
broadest claim rejected on one ground as a
representative of a separate group of claims subject to
a different ground of rejection.
Therefore, for purposes of this appeal, we select a single claim
from each group of claims subject to a common ground of rejection
and determine the propriety of each of the examiner’s rejections
based on this single representative claim consistent with 37 CFR
§ 41.37(c)(vii)(2004). See also McDaniel, 293 F.3d at 1383, 63
USPQ2d at 1465 (“If the brief fails to meet either requirement
[of 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(2001), now 37 CFR § 41.37(c)(vii)] the
Board is free to select a single claim from each group of claims
subject to a common ground of rejection as representative of all
claims in that group and to decide the appeal of that rejection
based solely on the selected representative claim.”). Selected
representative claims 1, 2 and 3 are reproduced below:
2
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007