Appeal No. 96-3543
Application No. 08/153,623
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to orient the
various members of the net in the manner recited in claim 14,
in view of the disclosures in these two references. Making
the net members of elongate extruded multifilaments of
polypropylene also would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art, as is evidenced by Lockney (column 3, line
15). Finally, Dilbey states that the net “includes a border
cord 4 extending around its periphery” (column 5, lines 28-
29), and in Lockney the entire net, including the border
member, is fabricated of a single length of rope (column 3,
lines 15 and 16). We agree with the examiner that it would
have been obvious to make the border member of a continuous
length of material, in view of these teachings, and we further
view splicing the ends of the material together to be a
notoriously old and well-known manner of working with ropes
and the like, which would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art
In the final analysis, while we have carefully considered
all of the arguments presented by the appellants that are
applicable to the examiner’s rejection of claim 14, we
conclude that a prima facie case of obviousness has been
12
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007