Appeal No. 2005-1722
Application 10/420,901
Dependent claims 2-7, 9-14, 16-20, and 22-26
Although we have reversed the rejection based on a lack of a
prima facie case of obviousness for the independent claims, we
think it is worthwhile to address appellant's argument that the
examiner has failed to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness with respect to the dependent claims because "the
Examiner simply focuses on the features of the independent claims
and is silent concerning the features of the dependent claims"
(Br17) and the "Examiner simply states that Cameron inherently or
obviously discloses the limitations of these claims at the
citations given above" (Br17).
The examiner states that the dependent claims were addressed
at paragraphs 17-20 of the final rejection and the statement that
"Cameron inherently or obviously discloses the limitations of
these claims at the citations given above" (FR6 ¶ 19) is a
"sentence fragment, not a complete sentence ... [which] is a typo
left over from a previous Office action" (EA10-11).
We agree with appellant that the examiner has failed to
address the limitations of the dependent claims in any meaningful
way and, thus, the rejection of the dependent claims must be
reversed for this additional reason.
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