Appeal No. 2003-1498
Application No. 09/762,000
As reflected by the above quotation, the Examiner’s § 103
rejection is based on the so-called admission, made by the
Appellants in paper no. 5 in response to the Examiner’s election of
species requirement, that the inventive species shown in their
drawing figures are obvious variants of each other. Such an
admission concerns only the inventive species disclosed by the
Appellants and is irrelevant to the issue of whether the
disclosures of Nachbauer and Jones would have suggested a faucet
lock of the type defined by the here rejected claims to one with an
ordinary level of skill in this art. Regarding this issue, the
Examiner has failed to follow a single one of the long established
guidelines for assessing the matter of obviousness within the
meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103 (e.g., see the Manual Patent Examining
Procedure, § 2141 (8th Ed. Rev. 1, Feb. 2003)).
For these reasons, we also cannot sustain the Examiner’s
§ 103 rejection of claim 3, 7, 8 and 10-20 as being obvious over
Nachbauer and Jones.
66
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007