Appeal No. 96-2779
Application 08/151,944
states on page 3 that during the peak tourist season, it is
conventional for a grounds keeper to comb the beach each
morning with a rake to maintain the beach clean and orderly
for the day’s use. Accordingly, it would have been obvious to
utilize Brown’s sandals to impress messages into the sand of a
beach that has been earlier raked smooth, the resulting method
corresponding to that of independent claim 3 in all respects.
We will not sustain the § 103 rejection of claims 4, 7
and 8, each of which depends from claim 3 and adds that the
messages are impressed by rolling the impressing means along
the smoothed compliant ground “immediately subsequent to
smoothing” the compliant ground. In rejecting these claims,
the examiner has taken the position that “[i]t is inherent of
the Moorhead apparatus to impress a pattern ‘immediately’
subsequent to the smoothing means/process . . .” (answer, page
6). This position is not well taken. We appreciate that in
Moorhead, the concrete is tamped, floated and troweled in
preparation for impressing the pattern in the concrete (column
2, lines 39-43). We also appreciate that tamping, floating
and troweling concrete constitutes smoothing the surface
thereof. It is not apparent to us, however, that Moorhead’s
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