Appeal No. 2006-0260 Παγε 3
Application No. 10/139,678
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
The examiner has rejected the claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over Denker in view of Terrell. We note that the test for obviousness is
what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to one of
ordinary skill in the art. See In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 591, 18 USPQ2d 1089, 1091
(Fed. Cir. 1991) and In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981).
It is the position of the examiner that Denker describes the invention as claimed
except that Denker does not describe conveying mail. The examiner relies on Terrell
for teaching conveying mail and concludes:
It would have been obvious to modify Denker (4,889,224) to
substitute mail item(s) in order to increase versatility as
taught by Terrell et al. (5,950,800) [answer at page 3].
Independent claim 1 requires that the second conveyor transport the mail in a
direction substantially orthogonal to the direction of the first conveyor and that the
second conveyor is capable of changing the position of the items into a uniformly
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