Appeal No. 2006-2057
Application No. 10/277,482
statement (brief, page 16) that claims 15-24 shall stand or fall with the patentability
of claim 152. We additionally note appellant's statement (brief, page 17) that
claims 25-30 shall stand or fall with the patentability of claim 25. Accordingly, we
find that appellant has only argued the three independent claims. Thus, we shall
separately consider claims 1, 15, and 25, as representative of the appealed claims.
We turn first to claim 1.
The examiner's position (answer, page 2) is that appellant's invention is a
variation of the invention of Awada ('643) with changes being made in how the
third wager is resolved and the addition of a side wager for achieving consecutive
wins. As such, Awada ('643) is considered to show the steps of the claimed
invention except the fourth wager for consecutive wins. With respect to the
limitation that the third wager is resolved by comparing each player's hand to a pay
table, this is considered to be shown by Awada ('643) by the "wager placed at the
poker wager 54 in combination with the wager placed at the 'bonus & jackpot'
wager 71-75." With respect to resolving the fourth wager based on consecutive
wins, the examiner (answer, page 2) turns to Ornstein for a teaching of "adding a
wagering component to be incorporated in known wagering games based on
number of consecutive wins…." The examiner adds (answer, page 3) that to have
added a side bet wagering component as a fourth wager in Awada ('643) for at least
two wins would have been obvious as taught by Ornstein in order to increase the
attraction for the game.
2 Notwithstanding appellant's statement, we find that claims 19 and 20 depend from claim 14,
not claim 15. Accordingly, claims 19 and 20 will stand or fall with claim 1.
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