Appeal No. 2006-0821 Παγε 3
Application No. 09/733,813
Claims 15, 16 and 29 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentble
over Refouvelet and Taylor or Craig and Swann in view of Seavey.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and the
appellants regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the answer
(mailed August 03, 2005) for the examiner's complete reasoning in support of the
rejections, and to the brief (filed May 19, 2005) for the appellants' arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellants' specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
We will not address the appellants argument regarding the propriety of the final
rejection because questions regarding the propriety or prematureness of the examiner's
final rejection are petitionable to the Commissioner under 37 CFR § 1.181. Therefore,
we do not have jurisdiction over the propriety of an examiner's action being made final.
See MPEP § 706.07(c).
We turn first to the examiner's rejection of claims 1 to 5, 8 to 11, 26 and 27. We
initially note that the test for obviousness is what the combined teachings of the
references would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Young,
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007