Appeal No. 97-1646
Application 08/080,890
After considering the rejections as stated in the examiner’s
answer in view of the arguments in the reply brief and in the
supplemental examiner’s answer, we conclude that these rejections
are not sustainable.
Appellants argue that Kühnert is nonanalogous art, and that
the examiner has engaged in improper hindsight reconstruction in
combining the references. Assuming, of which we are doubtful,
that Kühnert is analogous art, we perceive no teaching,
suggestion or motivation for one to use a carousel to supply the
thermoplastic waste material to Costarelli’s shearing machine.
The examiner asserts that this would avoid frequent feeding of
blocks M to the machine, but such blocks would still have to be
loaded into the carousel. The Kühnert carousel is a somewhat
complex device which is disclosed as being used to supply
biological or other specimens to a microscope for inspection. In
our view, one of ordinary skill would not derive therefrom any
suggestion to use such a device for supplying blocks of
thermoplastic waste to a shearing machine.
Rejections Pursuant to 37 CFR § 1.196(b)
(1) Claims 1 and 8 to 10 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b)
as anticipated by Nix, which discloses an apparatus and method
for remotely cutting blocks of propellant material. A block of
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007