Appeal No. 2001-1465 Page 4
Application No. 09/048,522
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Spivy, the jumping off point for the examiner’s determination of obviousness in
each of the rejections before us, discloses an apparatus for cutting a belt sleeve 21
utilizing a high velocity liquid jet 31 issued from a jet nozzle 30. The apparatus
comprises a pair of cylinders 22 for supporting and rotating the belt sleeve and “suitable
moving means” (column 4, lines 32-33) for moving the jet nozzle 30 axially along the
belt sleeve 21. The examiner concedes (answer, page 4) that Spivy does not disclose
an imaging subassembly and control system as called for in independent claim 1.
Noé discloses a system for trimming a continuously moving metal strip 1,
including optical edge-position detectors 6, a sensor 7 for measuring the width B of the
strip, a web-speed detector 8, a processor 9 which calculates from the outputs of
sensors 7, 8 how much material must be trimmed off the strip edges to produce a
desired finished workpiece width and a control unit 10 which controls head positioners 3
to move trimming heads 4 independently of each other to trim the edge as needed
based upon the output of the processor 9. An upstream monitoring station 20 further
monitors irregularities in both longitudinal edges of the strip and transmits that
information to the processor 9. The control of the trimming heads is effected such that
the edge strip E trimmed from both sides is maintained continuous. While this results
at times in trimming of the workpiece to a width which is too narrow, Noé considers it
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