Appeal 2007-2910
Application 10/304,881
1 THE CLAIMS
2 Claims 11 and 13-16 are pending.2 Claims 11 and 13-15 depend
3 directly or indirectly from claim 16.3 Air Products has not provided separate
4 arguments for the claims as permitted by rule so the claims stand or fall
5 together.4 We select claim 16 to represent the group. Claim 16 defines the
6 invention as follows:5
7 16. In a surface previously coated with a paint
8 composition,
9 the improvement which comprises
10 a water-based paint composition applied thereto
11 said water-based paint composition having wet adhesion
12 properties,
13 the water-based paint composition comprising
14 a pigment grind,
15 a vinyl acetate based polymeric emulsion and
16 an epoxy resin and amine curative into said water-
17 based paint composition,
18 said amine curative being incorporated in a substantially
19 stoichiometric amount based upon said epoxy resin to crosslink
20 said epoxy resin and
21 said epoxy resin is a glycidyl ether of bisphenol A.
22
23 Claim 16 is very oddly worded. Usually a claim is understood to
24 complete a sentence beginning "I claim…". Thus, the claim is the direct
25 object of the implicit sentence, with additional modifiers of varying
26 complexity. In claim 16, however, the direct object is "the improvement".
27 The problem with this structure is that it begs the question what is being
2 Appeal Brief under 37 C.F.R. § 41.37 (Br.) 1.
3 Br. 7 (Claims Appendix). All claim language comes from the appendix.
4 Br. 3-6; 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii).
5 In this opinion, the claim has been broken into indented subparagraphs as
required by rule. 37 C.F.R. § 1.75(i).
2
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