Appeal No. 2001-0019
Application No. 09/240,197
wood to effect reciprocation thereof. It is the examiner’s
position, however, that it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art “to combine the baling and log
splitting apparatus of Fincham with the vertically pivotable and
reciprocatingly movable log splitting wedge and closed loop
hydraulic system of Balsbaugh” (answer, page 5), and “to combine
the baling chamber of the primary Fincham reference with the
hydraulically operable chain of Lundahl, et al., as a means of
expelling baled items from a baling chamber” (answer, page 6),
and thereby arrive at the subject matter of the appealed claims.
We do not agree.
First, the examiner does not adequately explain how the
teachings of the secondary references are to be applied to the
primary references, i.e., how Fincham is to be modified in view
of the teachings of the other applied references. Second, the
examiner does not adequately explain how the subject matter of
the claims would result, i.e., how the modified Fincham device
would satisfy the terms of the claims. Setting aside in our
minds the teachings of the present application, when we
collectively consider the teachings of the applied references as
a whole, it is apparent to us that the reference teachings would
not have suggested the proposed operation of Fincham’s hydraulic
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