Appeal No. 1998-1258 Page 3
Application No. 08/442,676
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Independent claim 17 is directed to a method of loading a plurality of doses of a
predetermined amount of particulate material into the apertures of a plate. The method
comprises the steps of supporting the plate on a porous bed in such a position that the
apertures communicate with a reservoir of an excess amount of particulate material,
exerting sufficient gaseous pressure on the material to cause it to fill the apertures, with the
porous bed allowing gas to escape while preventing the particulate material from being
expelled, and separating the filled apertures from the reservoir. The examiner is of the
view that the subject matter of this claim is unpatentable on the basis of the combined
teachings of Boyhan and Ulveling. In particular, it is his position that Boyhan teaches all of
the features of the claim except for the packaging of particulate material and the use of
pressurized gas to force it into the apertures, but that it would have been obvious to utilize
the Boyhan bottom plate “with reduced components and a middle plate with
correspondingly reduced holes to pass a supply of powdered material from a supply into
said compartments in order to evenly distribute the powder into individual compartments
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