Appeal No. 2006-1489
Application No. 10/452,059
patenting rejection of all appealed claims since this rejection
has not been contested by the appellants and, indeed, has been
characterized by the appellants as “not really at issue on
appeal” (sentence bridging pages 5-6 of the brief).
As for the Section 103 rejections of all appealed claims, it
is the appellants’ basic contention that each of these rejections
is improper because the roofing laminate or element of Rowe is
not “of the shingle or tile type” as required by independent
claim 1. In support of this contention, the appellants refer to
their disclosure and proffer evidence in the form of definitions
from the McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical
Terms, the Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, and The New
Encyclopedia Britannica as well as the declaration of Robert L.
Jenkins under 37 CFR § 1.132 (2004) which includes exhibits
entitled (A) Grace Construction Products and (B) Residential
Asphalt Roofing Manual.
In response, the examiner argues that the appellants’
specification and drawing disclosure does not restrict the scope
of claim 1 to roofing elements which exclude those disclosed by
Rowe. Moreover, the examiner considers patentee’s roofing
laminates or elements to fall within the appellants’ proffered
definitions for the terms “shingle” and “tile.” Concerning the
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