Appeal No. 2005-2453
Application No. 10/102,923
The examiner relies upon the following references as
evidence of obviousness:
Frame et al. (Frame)1 5,713,324 Feb. 3, 1998
Tanaka et al. (Tanaka) 6,060,182 May 9, 2000
Iwashita et al. (Iwashita) 6,325,385 Dec. 4, 2001
Appellants' claimed invention is directed to a piston ring
having a continuous hard carbon film containing one or more of
silicon, tungsten and nickel. The hard carbon film is situated
on the outer peripheral, inner peripheral, top and bottom
surfaces.
The Board remanded this application to the examiner to
provide a response to appellants' argument based upon Example 1
and Comparative Example 1 of the specification. The examiner
responded to the remand in an Answer dated December 30, 2004, and
appellants presented a Reply Brief on February 4, 2005.
Appealed claims 1-3, 6-12 and 14-17 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Iwashita in view of
Tanaka.
Appellants submit that "the claims do not stand or fall
together" (page 5 of the original Brief of November 10, 2003).
1 We note that the examiner has not repeated the rejection
of the claims over Iwashita in view of Frame (Answer, dated
December 30, 2004; see the first Answer dated January 13, 2004,
page 4). Accordingly, we consider this rejection to be withdrawn
(see the Reply Brief, dated February 4, 2005, page 1).
-2-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007