Appeal No. 2002-0937 Page 4
Application No. 09/301,985
means for rotating the roller assemblies in such a
manner than [sic] an object may be loaded longitudinally
from the adjacent surface onto the deck or from the deck
onto the adjacent surface or from the surface onto the
platform by rotation of third and fourth groups of roller
assemblies in the same direction as one another, as the
first, second and fifth groups remain passive, and, when
loaded on the deck, the object may be rotated about a
vertical axis centered generally equidistant the sets of the
fifth group as well as equidistant the third and fourth groups
by simultaneous rotation of the roller assemblies of the third
and fourth groups in opposite rotational directions with
respect to one another and rotation of the assemblies of the
spaced portions of the fifth group in the opposite directions
with respect to one another.
Appellant complains in the brief (pages 16 and 17) that the examiner has not
explained where in the primary reference to Ihara the five groups of roller assemblies,
as claimed, are found or where suggestion to modify Ihara’s back elevator 16 to provide
the five groups of roller assemblies as claimed is found in either of the secondary
references. We appreciate appellant’s difficulty in this regard and note that, even in the
answer, the examiner has failed to identify which rollers or groups of rollers of Ihara
correspond to the recited five groups of roller assemblies recited in claim 1. The
examiner’s rejection only broadly refers to two roller assemblies 29 and 30 and makes
no attempt to correlate any of the rollers of these two roller assemblies with any of the
first through fifth groups of roller assemblies recited in the claim. The statement on
page 3 of the answer that “it would have been obvious to have included conventional
grouped and fifth roller assemblies (as claimed) and to have conventionally rotated the
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