Appeal No. 95-4678
Application 08/097,572
power circuit within the emergency powerpack housing enclosure
for detecting failure of the primary electric power circuit and
switching to the emergency electric power supply as recited in
claim 1. As noted above, the appellants do not dispute the
examiner’s conclusion that Shine would have suggested providing
the Duncan sign with attachment means of the sort recited in
claim 1. The assembly resulting from this modification meets all
of the limitations recited in claim 1. Moreover, since Duncan
discloses that section strip 3 is fixed within its sign housing,
these two elements are inherently “dimensionally sized so as to
prevent relative movement therebetween” as recited in dependent
claim 9.
The 37 CFR § 1.132 declarations and affidavits relied upon
by the appellants as evidence of non-obviousness are not
persuasive with respect to claims 1 and 9. This evidence
purportedly establishes that the appellants’ invention solves a
long felt need in the art and has gained significant commercial
success and industry recognition due to its removable emergency
power pack module (see pages 16 through 27 in the main brief).
Neither claim 1 nor claim 9, however, requires a removable
emergency power pack module of the sort discussed in the
declarations and affidavits. In other words, the appellants’
9
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