Appeal No. 95-3879
Application 08/162,920
However, the examiner’s rejection of claims 3 and 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over Planeta, Noble
and Schott is reversed because the art taken as a whole does not present a prima facie case of
obviousness. We do not share the examiner’s view concerning the teachings of the Schott reference.
Schott’s guide assembly is not part of or related to the collapsing frame of the apparatus disclosed in
Schott. The examiner’s reliance on the guide assembly of Schott as showing that it would be obvious to
a person having ordinary skill in the art to modify Planeta’s collapsing frame roller mechanism to mount
rollers to the left and right side of the longitudinal center line of the frame such that the rollers are
substantially transverse to and rearwardly inclined to the direction of travel of the tube is far reaching.
Schott does not teach or suggest that the guide assembly is used as a collapsing frame or for the purpose
of collapsing thin walled plastic tubes. The examiner has not provided any analysis of Schott explaining
how and why a person having ordinary skill in the art reading Schott would have been led to employ
Schott’s guide assembly as a collapsing frame with the expectation of minimizing wrinkles in the collapsed
plastic tubing. Neither Planeta nor Noble make up for the deficiencies of Schott. For these reasons, the
examiner’s rejection of claims 3 and 4 cannot be sustained.
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