Appeal 2006-1660
Application 10/609,087
Examiner's rejections of claim 71 under § 102/§103 over Campbell alone.
Claims 68 and 71 are dependent claims which recite that "lithium halide is
not added to the vessel" (claim 68), and "a lithium halide is not added to the
sulfur source, to the solution, or to the mixture" (claim 71). According to
Appellants, "[t]he Board overlooked the fact that the Examiner did not point
to any passage in Campbell or Koyama that would anticipate or render
obvious the subject matter described herein separately recited in claims 68
and 71" (page 2 of Request, second paragraph).
Appellants' request for the Board to reconsider the Examiner's prior
art rejections of claims 68 and 71 is untimely. Neither Appellants' principal
or Reply Briefs on appeal advanced any substantive argument concerning
the nonobviousness of not adding lithium halide to the vessel, the sulfur
source, the solution or the mixture in light of the Campbell disclosure,
considered alone or in view of Koyama. It is well settled that arguments not
advanced in the Brief are abandoned. While Appellants make reference to
pages 6, 9, and 10 of the principal Brief, page 6 simply restates the
limitations of claims 68 and 71, whereas page 9 only offers the conclusory
remark that "the Senga, Campbell, and Koyoma [sic, Koyama] references
cited by the examiner in the Final Office Action, whether taken alone or in
combination, do not teach or suggest the features recited in claims 68 and
71" (page 9, last paragraph). Such a remark is not tantamount to the
requisite substantive argument explaining why the claimed recitation would
not have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the prior
art disclosure. In any event, our review of Campbell finds no teaching that
lithium halide must be added to the recited vessel or to the reaction contents.
Indeed, Examples I and II make no mention of a lithium halide.
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