Appeal No. 2001-1969
Application No. 09/040,478
Joker’s Wild” disclosure as providing a suggestion for modifying
the slot machine of Adams to thereby effect the claimed slot
machine and method of appellants’ respective claims 34 and 35.
While “The Joker’s Wild” game show required three rotating
wheels, akin to the rotating symbol arrangement of a slot
machine, clearly the game show is not a slot machine. More
significantly, however, is the circumstance that an appearing
Joker symbol(s) in the game show acts to either double or triple
a selected category’s value, or allow a player to win a game
automatically when three Joker’s appear. Thus, the game show
teaching would not have suggested the selection of a random
multiplier value when at least one of a plurality of symbols is a
bonus symbol. As we see it, at best, the game show arrangement
would have offered one having ordinary skill in the art the
option of a bonus symbol to double (appearance of one bonus
symbol) or triple (appearance of two bonus symbols) a first award
value upon the appearance of one or two bonus symbols, as an
alternative to the Adams random multiplier arrangement lacking
bonus symbols. For the preceding reasons, we conclude that, only
with appellants’ own teaching in mind, would one having ordinary
skill in the art have been able to achieve the claimed invention
on the basis of the applied prior art. Thus, the obviousness
7
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