Appeal No. 2005-0841
Application No. 08/230,083
application was never itself patented or
amended in any way to become patented.
Instead, original claims 2 and 12-14 contain
allowable subject matter as filed. The
Examiner therefore merely objected to those
claims in the Office Action mailed May 17,
1991, and indicated those claims as being
allowable if rewritten in independent form to
include all of the limitations of the base
claim and any intervening claims. In
response to the initial Office Action of May
17, 1991, applicant canceled original
allowable claims 2 and 12 and rewrote them
into independent form as new claims 15 and
16, respectively.
Essentially, applicant never amended
independent claim 1 in the original
application in order to secure allowance
thereof. Rather, applicant merely canceled
the rejected claims [, including rejected
claim 1,] and rewrote the allowable claims
into independent form to include all of the
limitations of the base claim and any
intervening claims.
. . . .
[Thus,] applicant respectfully submits
that the broader aspects of reissue claim 14,
namely the absence of the limitation of
"wherein the inner frame 4 has a surrounding
rim 7 carrying rib members 8 spaced
transversely with stays 9 extending therefrom
and a surrounding frame 10 joining the stays
9" does not relate in any way to any subject
matter that could fairly be considered to be
"surrendered" during prosecution.
. . . .
Further, applicant respectfully submits
that reissue claim 14 is broader than the
canceled or amended claim only in an aspect
unrelated and not germane to the rejection in
that the reissue claim 14 does not include
the limitation of "the inner frame 4 has a
surrounding rim 7 carrying rib members 8
spaced transversely with stays 9 extending
- 36 -36
Page: Previous 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007