Appeal No. 96-0005
Application 07/722,599
This is an appeal from the final rejection of claims 1, 3,
15, 16, 19, 20, 36, 37, 62 and 63. Claims 4-14, 17, 18, 21-29,2
32, 35 and 38-40 stand allowed. Claims 41-51, 64 and 65 have
been indicated by the examiner to be allowable subject to the
requirement that they be rewritten to include all the subject
matter of the claims from which they depend.
As summarized on page 2 of the brief, the appellants’
invention
is directed toward a type of watercraft which may be
used in conjunction with a small conventional jet
propelled type of watercraft so as to accommodate a
larger number of passengers than that afforded by the
smaller watercraft. However, the larger watercraft,
sometimes referred to as the mother ship, has no
propulsion unit of its own. In accordance with an
important feature of the invention, the passenger
compartment of the mother ship is laid out so that the
controls of the smaller watercraft, when contained in a
berthing area of the mother ship, can be reached by a
seated passenger so that the combined watercraft may be
propelled by the propulsion device of the smaller
watercraft while being controlled from the larger
watercraft.
Independent claim 1 is further illustrative of the appealed
subject matter and reads as follows:
1. A watercraft comprised of a main hull devoid of any
propulsion device or control therefor and defining a berthing
area opening through a part of said main hull for receiving a
smaller watercraft having a propulsion device and controls
therefore, a passenger compartment defined by said main hull and
2Claim 62 has been amended by an amendment filed subsequent
to final rejection on December 12, 1994 (Paper No. 29).
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