Appeal No. 96-1441
Application 08/096,458
rear wall, top wall, and bottom wall. The sidewalls
each have slots integrally formed thereon defined by
the spaces between shelf supports 20. Thus defined,
surface 22 is a bottom surface of said slot and
supports any one of a variety of shelves. Jenkins
lacks slots which extend into the plane of the
sidewalls away from the interior of the cabinet.
Trevitt has a cabinet similar to the refrigerator
cabinet of Jenkins in that it is designed to support
a plurality of shelves. Trevitt further teaches
slots extending into the planes of the sidewalls of
the cabinet for slidingly receiving and supporting
the shelves. It would have been obvious to have
provided the slots of Jenkins extending into the
plane of the sidewalls as taught by Trevitt instead
of being provided by protruding ledges extending out
of the plane of the sidewalls as provided by
Jenkins, because doing so would have provided the
advantage of additional insulating space in the
liner of Jenkins between adjacent slots. Regarding
claims 1 and 16-17, Jenkins teaches limit means 45,
47 in the slot comprising a protrusion which engages
a protrusion on the shelf as shown in figures 6-10
and which prevents a shelf from moving in at least
one direction [final rejection, Paper No. 5, pages 2
and 3].
The examiner further explains that
to provide the shelf supports as slots extending
into, or as ribs on, the plane of a sidewall is also
a matter of design choice. Furthermore, whether
ribs are considered as spaces between slots or
simply ribs on a sidewall becomes a matter of
interpretation and may depend on the width of the
ribs as compared to the width of the slots they
define. Therefore, it is considered obvious to
apply the stronger motivation of broadening the
surface on the liner between the slots of Jenkins to
provide the advantage of more volume and insulation
between the slots and between the cabinet and liner.
-5-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007