Appeal No. 2005-2140
Application No. 09/943,355
OPINION
As a preliminary matter, we note that appellant indicates on
page 5 of the Brief that claims 1 through 6, 8 through 14, and 16
through 20 stand or fall together. Appellants have only argued
claims 7 and 15 separately. Accordingly, for each ground of
rejection, we will treat all of the claims as standing or falling
together except for claims 7 and 15, which we will treat as a
separate group.
We have carefully considered the claims, the applied prior
art references, and the respective positions articulated by
appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we
will reverse the obviousness rejections of claims 1 through 20
and enter new grounds of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph, for claims 6 and 14, and under 35 U.S.C. § 103 for
claims 1, 9, 19, and 20.
The examiner asserts (Answer, page 10) that with respect to
independent claims 1 and 9, Figure 10 of Saotome II teaches
everything except that the erasing light source is not
illustrated as sheet-shaped nor is it on the side of the phosphor
sheet that is exposed to radiation. The examiner points to
column 10, line 64-column 11, line 5, of Saotome II as showing
that Saotome considers a sheet-shaped erasing light source to be
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