Appeal 2006-3158
Application 09/945,764
The Examiner has relied on the following references as evidence of
obviousness:
Kinney US 3,934,503 Jan. 27, 1976
Mori US 5,908,687 Jun. 01, 1999
Mori (JP ‘075) JP 10-147075 Jun. 02, 19981
Claims 1, 2, and 4 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over JP ‘075 alone or in view of Kinney (Answer 3). Claims 1,
3, and 5-19 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over
JP ‘075 in view of Mori (Answer 5).2
Based on the totality of the record, we AFFIRM both grounds of
rejection in this appeal essentially for the reasons stated in the Answer, as
well as those reasons set forth below.3
1 We rely upon and cite from a full English translation of this document, as
provided by the Examiner in the letter dated Jun. 1, 2006, in response to a
Remand by a panel of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences dated
May 16, 2006. We also note that Appellant refers to this document as
“Tomiya ‘075” (e.g., Br. 7) and the Examiner refers to this reference as
“Tomiya et al.” and “JP ‘075” (Answer 3-4). We will refer to this
translation as “JP ‘075.”
2 We note that the Examiner inadvertently omitted claim 1 from the
statement of the rejection (Answer 5). However, in view of the inclusion of
claim 1 in this rejection in the Final Office Action dated July 29, 2003, and
Appellant’s recognition of claim 1 as included in this rejection (Br. 8), we
hold this error harmless. Therefore we consider claim 1 as included in this
ground of rejection.
3 The rejection of claims 1-19 under the second paragraph of § 112 in the
Final Office Action dated July 29, 2003, has been overcome by the
Amendment dated Sep. 25, 2003 (see the Advisory Action dated Oct. 15,
2003).
3
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