Appeal No. 97-0374 Application 08/310,493 Appellant’s invention relates to a display rack for bottles and the like. Claim 6 is representative of the subject matter on appeal and a copy of that claim, as it appears in the appendix to appellant’s brief, is attached to this decision. The single prior art reference of record relied upon by the examiner as evidence of obviousness of the claimed subject matter is: Murphy 3,964,810 Jun. 22, 1976 Claims 6 and 7 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. � 103 as being unpatentable over Murphy. As indicated on page 2 of the final rejection, it is the examiner’s position that Murphy shows all of the claimed invention except for the shape of the pillars 45 and posts C. To merely modify the shape is generally considered to be obvious to one with ordinary skill in the art, as it would be here, to make the pillars and posts of Murphy triang-ular in shape. Note, lines 4-6 in column 7 which indicate stackability. Reference is made to the final rejection (Paper no. 4, mailed February 23, 1996) and to the examiner's answer (Paper 2Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007