Appeal No. 2001-1225 Page 5
Application No. 09/019,693
playing surface in view of the showing of Breslow and to provide extra balls to eliminate
stoppage of the game to retrieve a lost, damaged or misplaced ball. To support the
examiner’s response to the appellant’s challenge to the examiner taking Official Notice of
the equivalence of pucks and balls as surface projectiles in games, the examiner has cited
Sterlicchi, Schwartz, Chou and Laciste. The appellant has provided a number of
arguments in opposition to the examiner’s positions, which we find not to be persuasive
with regard to claim 1. Our reasons for arriving at this conclusion follow.
In Figure 1, Seede discloses a competitive skill game played with a ball and
comprising a playing surface having an upper end and two sides framed by an upstanding
wall. The lower end is “unframed,” as required by claim 1, in that there is no solid end, but
a “yielding back stop 15" having a “pocket 16" into which a ball may expend its energy and
then drop (page 2, lines 14-19). No solid support for the yielding back stop is described or
shown. It is our opinion that the lower end of the Seede table is “unframed” and “open” to
the same extent as the table disclosed by the appellant. In this regard, the table is
described on page 6 of the appellant’s specification as having a “blind pouch 30," which
as shown in Figure 2 extends above the level of the table 12. Two playing stations are
defined in the Seede device, which has a divider (5) centered between the sides and
extending from the unframed lower end substantially more than halfway toward the upper
end. Seede further discloses that the ball is to be struck by a mallet (page 1, lines 100-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007