Appeal No. 2005-0288 Page 2
Application No. 10/075,786
BACKGROUND
The appellants' invention relates to the field of protective coverings, and, more
particularly to a protective cover for lengths of material such as ropes, tethers, lanyards,
etc. of the type that are likely to be subjected to continuous abrasion and/or exposure to
undesirable environmental conditions or chemicals (specification, p. 1). A copy of the
claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants' brief.
The prior art references of record relied upon by the examiner in rejecting the
appealed claims are:
Kite, III et al. (Kite) 4,891,256 Jan. 2, 1990
Holt et al. (Holt) 5,070,597 Dec. 10, 1991
Andrieu et al. (Andrieu) 5,300,337 Apr. 5, 1994
Holland et al. (Holland) 5,395,682 Mar. 7, 1995
Ratigan 5,441,790 Aug. 15, 1995
The rejections under appeal are as follows:2
2 In the final rejection (p. 3) claims 1 to 13 were provisionally rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 101 as claiming the same invention as that of claims 1 to 13 of copending
Application No. 09/860,423. The appellants filed a Terminal Disclaimer on October 30,
2003 supposedly to obviate the provisional double patenting rejection based on pending
Application Number 09/860,423. However, while a Terminal Disclaimer can obviate a
provisional "obviousness type" double patenting rejection, a Terminal Disclaimer can not
obviate a provisional "same invention type" double patenting rejection. The appellants
have not contested this rejection in the brief. The examiner has not set forth this
rejection in the answer. It is unclear to us as to the status of this rejection.
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