Appeal No. 96-3304
Application 08/279,565
above for Becker and Wakatsuki as they relate to claims 1 and
14 from which claims 10 and 23 depend. As such, we will not
sustain this rejection.
Under the provisions of 37 CFR § 1.196(b), we make the
following new rejection:
Claims 1-4, 8, 11-17, and 21 are rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Becker.
As detailed above, Becker discloses an apparatus with a
metering mechanism 5 and a tampering indicating mechanism.
With regard to the tampering indicating mechanism, Becker
discloses that a drum which includes markings is read to
determine whether it has been advanced to a next set of
markings thereby indicating that the base has been removed
from or replaced in the socket. Becker also discloses that
the markings can be bar code markings and that bar coding
enables automatic remote optical detection by a meter reader
using an optical laser scanner. As such, it is our view that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
to utilize bar code markings on the metering mechanism 5 to
display changes in input to the metering apparatus in order to
enable automatic remote optical detection by a meter reader
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