Appeal No. 2006-0430 Page 4
Application No. 09/859,425
Claims 1-21 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as obvious over U.S.
Patent No. 6,421,733 ("Tso") and U.S. Patent No. 6,073,147 ("Chan").
.
II. OPINION
"When multiple claims subject to the same ground of rejection are argued as a
group by appellant[s], the Board may select a single claim from the group of claims that
are argued together to decide the appeal with respect to the group of claims as to the
ground of rejection on the basis of the selected claim alone. Notwithstanding any other
provision of this paragraph, the failure of appellant[s] to separately argue claims which
appellant[s] has grouped together shall constitute a waiver of any argument that the
Board must consider the patentability of any grouped claim separately." 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii) (Sep. 30, 2004).
Here, claims 1-21 are subject to the same ground of rejection. Rather than
arguing the patentability of dependent claims 2-5, 7-9, 12-15, and 17-20 separately, the
appellants rely on their arguments for independent claims 1, 6, 11, and 16, respectively.
(Appeal Br. at 15, 20, 21, 25.) Therefore, we select each independent claim as
representative of its dependent claims. With this representation in mind, rather than
reiterate the positions of the examiner or the appellants in toto, we focus on the two
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