Appeal No. 96-1827
Application 08/112,576
anticipated by Samuels.
Turning now to the standing 35 U.S.C. § 103 rejection of claims 2, 3, 11, 12 and 17 through
19, the Waddington reference contains a discussion of Shogi, the Japanese version of chess.
According to Waddington, all of the shogi pieces in a game are the same shape and color and are
distinguished only by size and indicia. Each player initially owns a set of pieces including a king, a rook,
a bishop, two gold generals, two silver generals, two knights, two lances, and nine pawns. The pieces
of the players are differentiated on the board by being pointed toward the opposing player. One
feature of the game is that captured pieces may be returned to the board as members of the capturing
side.
In proposing to combine Samuels and Waddington, the examiner states merely that “[i]n order
to play shogi, it would have been obvious to provide the pieces of Waddington” (final rejection, page
3). Suffice it to say that this statement fails to give any meaningful indication of the precise manner in
which the two references are intended to be combined. Our own review of Samuels and Waddington
shows that they are completely lacking in suggestion or motivation to combine them in any way relevant
to the issues present in this appeal.
Be this as it may, however, claim 2 is broad enough to read on Samuels alone. More
particularly, the recitation in claim 2 of two subsets of pieces which do not vary from each other in
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