Appeal No. 2006-1610
Application No. 09/826,420
2, 3, 8-14, 16, 17, and 22-36 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being unpatentable over McGowan in view of Multivac.
Although appellants submit at page 2 of the principal brief
that claims 1-36 are each independently patentable and "do not
stand or fall together," appellants have not presented
substantive arguments with respect to any particular claim on
appeal, with the exception of claim 2. Accordingly, the two
groups of claims separately rejected by the examiner stand or
fall together.
We have thoroughly reviewed each of appellants' arguments
for patentability. However, we are in complete agreement with
the examiner that the claimed subject matter would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art within the meaning
of § 103 in view of the applied prior art. Accordingly, we will
sustain the examiner's rejections for the reasons set forth in
the Answer, which we incorporate herein, and we add the
following primarily for emphasis.
We consider first the examiner's § 103 rejection of claims
1, 4-7, 15 and 18-21 over McGowan. There is no dispute that
McGowan, like appellants, discloses a device for sterilizing a
medical article comprising a housing in a first web, an article
loading station, an alignment device, a sterilization-sealing
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