Appeal No. 2005-0440
Application No. 09/994,075
VII. claim 12 as unpatentable over Hovey in view of
Tsukamoto and further in view of the appellants’
admitted prior art (id.)
We affirm all seven rejections. Because we are in complete
agreement with the examiner’s factual findings and legal
conclusions, we adopt them as our own and add the following
comments primarily for emphasis.1
The examiner’s rejections are based on two alternative
principal prior art references, namely WO ’308 and Hovey. Each
of these principal prior art references is combined with various
other prior art references as evidence in support of a
determination of obviousness.
WO ’308 discloses that “paper from mechanical pulps lose
brightness due to alkaline darkening of the pulp when fillers
such as calcium carbonate are used in the papermaking process.”
(Page 2, lines 6-10.) Thus, WO ’308 is concerned with solving
1 The appellants submit that “[t]he claims...are separately
patentable.” (Appeal brief filed Jun. 23, 2003 at 5.) We note,
however, that the appellants rely on the same argument for all
the appealed claims. While the appellants summarize the
limitations set forth in appealed claims 1-10 and 20-25 (id. at
16-19), “[m]erely pointing out differences in what the claims
cover is not an argument as to why the claims are separately
patentable.” See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(2004)(effective Apr. 21,
1995). Thus, consistent with this regulation, we hold that all
4
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