system for moving food products or other articles through a processing cycle” (col. 1, ll,
3-6) and mentions facilitating the continuous movement of “products such as fish sticks,
vegetables, fried potatoes, pies or the like, in unpackaged form or in pans, packages, or
the like” (col. 1, ll. 49-52). Against this background, one of ordinary skill in the art
would not have construed Gram’s apparatus as handling books, a required element of
claim 1.
Accordingly, Gram d oes not anticipate claim 1. The anticipation rejection of claim
1 , and claims 4, 7 and 14 depending from claim 1, therefore cannot be sustained.
Moreover, given the background of the invention as set forth in Gram and in the
Khoyl ian patent referenced in Gram, discussed above, one skilled in the art would have
found no suggestion in Gram, or in the additional teachings of Rathert and Mil haupt
relied on by the examiner in rejecting dependent claims 5 and 6, to transport books on the
Gram apparatus. It thus follows that we also cannot sustain the rejections of claim 5 as
being unpatentable over Gram in view of Rathert and claim 6 as being unpatentable over
Gram in view of Milhaupt.
SUMMARY
To summarize, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1, 4, 7 and 14 under 35
U.S.C. § 102(b) and claims 5 and 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (a) is REVERSED.
REVERSE D
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