Appeal No. 1997-2215
Application 08/332,058
are, in the examiner's view, anticipatory of the subject
matter of claims 1 or 18. It is the duty of the Patent and
Trademark Office to make clear factual findings.
Turning to claim 18 which is broader in some respects
than the other independent claim, claim 1, we note that claim
18 requires stopper members for positioning the exposure
aperture masking plates in the panoramic position. The next
clause of claim 18 requires that the stopper members contact
the exposure aperture plates. Even a cursory review of
Alligood and Goddard establishes that there is no stopper
structure for contacting the exposure aperture masking plates
when these plates are in their panoramic position. The
exposure aperture masking plates of Alligood and Goddard when
in panoramic position are suspended free of any contact by a
structure which could be regarded as a stopper member.
Accordingly, the rejections of claim 18 under 35 U.S.C. §§
102(a) and (e) based on Goddard or Alligood, respectively, are
reversed.
Turning to the rejection of claim 18 based on the Tanaka
reference, we find it necessary to construe the switching
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