Appeal No. 96-2890
Application 08/318,781
first paragraph rejection are vague and indefinite. We cannot
agree, for the same reasons as were expressed immediately above.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, also is
not sustained.3
The Rejection Under 35 U.S.C. § 103
The examiner’s theory is that Scott discloses the claimed
three stacked, transparent game boards but lacks the required two
series of three different game pieces. For this, the examiner
looks to Time, which discloses a three dimensional chess game in
which there are two series of at least three different game
pieces. The examiner’s position apparently is that it would have
been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to utilize the
Time game pieces with the Scott stacked game boards. Essential
to the examiner’s conclusion is that the limitation that the
paths of the game boards are diagonal to the peripheral edge of
3 We do note, however, some matters in the claims which are
worthy of comment. We have interpreted the phrase “diagonally
off from peripheral edges” in claim 11, and the similar
phraseology which appears in claim 22, to mean that the paths
diagonally intersect the peripheral edges. We also note two
apparent errors in claim 11 which appear to be in need of
correction: In line 25 of the claim as presented in the amendment
accompanying the Reply Brief, it would appear that “playing
field” should read --playing surface-- in both occurrences, and
in line 26 that “peripheral shape” should read --peripheral edge-
-, in order to have proper antecedent basis.
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