Appeal No. 2002-0251
Application No. 09/220,170
As noted on page 1 of the specification, appellants'
invention relates to tractor ballast and, more specifically,
relates to ballast boxes for attachment to tractor three-point
hitches. Independent claim 7 is representative of the subject
matter on appeal and a copy of that claim can be found in the
Appendix to appellants' brief.
The prior art references of record relied upon by the
examiner in rejecting the appealed claims are:
Nau et al. (Nau) 4,537,423 Aug. 27, 1985
Teich 5,690,359 Nov. 25, 1997
Claim 7 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Teich.
Claims 9 and 14 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Teich in view of Nau.
Rather than reiterate the examiner's explanation of the
above-noted rejections and the conflicting viewpoints advanced by
the examiner and appellants regarding those rejections, we make
reference to the examiner's answer (Paper No. 13, mailed August
14, 2001) for the examiner's reasoning in support of the
22
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007