Appeal No. 2005-0295
Application 10/151,586
Appealed independent claims 22 and 29, drawn to a method of producing a chewing gum
and to a chewing gum, respectively, employ essentially the same language to specify the
“selection” of the plasticizer that appears in the above claims. Appealed independent claim 35 is
drawn to a method of producing environmentally friendly chewing gum in which “the plasticizer
. . . [is] selected based on a ratio of electron acceptors to total carbon atoms, and a ratio of
electron donors to total carbon atoms,” with out specifying either ratio.
The reference relied on by the examiner is:
Abdel-Malik et al. (Abdel-Malik) 5,882,702 Mar. 16, 1999
The examiner rejects appealed claims 1 through 37 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
anticipated by or, in the alternative, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over Abdel-Malik
(answer, pages 2-4).
Appellants state that they “argue for the separate patentability of each of the independent
claims separate and apart from each other as set forth in detail below pursuant to the
requirements of 37 CFR § 1.192(7) [sic, 192(c)(7)], unless otherwise specified” (brief, page 6).
We find that appellants describe the differences in limitations between the independent claims
but do not present separate arguments for patentability thereon (brief, e.g., pages 6-7 and 11-12).
Merely identifying differences in limitations between the appealed claims does not amount to
arguments for separate patentability of the claims. Thus, we decide this appeal based on method
claim 1 and product claim 11 as representative of the grounds of rejection. 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)
(2003); see also 37 CFR § 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (effective September 13, 2004; 69 Fed. Reg. 49960
(August 12, 2004); 1286 Off. Gaz. Pat. Office 21 (September 7, 2004)).
We affirm.
Rather than reiterate the respective positions advanced by the examiner and appellants,
we refer to the answer and to the brief and reply brief for a complete exposition thereof.
Opinion
As an initial matter, we interpret the language of appealed claims 1 and 11 by giving the
terms their broadest reasonable interpretation in light of the written description in appellants’
specification as it would be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art, without reading into
these claim any limitation or particular embodiment disclosed in the specification. See In re
Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Zletz, 893 F.2d
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