Appeal No. 97-3295
Application No. 08/424,759
manner proposed by the examiner in view of the teachings of
Spann, and the rejection therefore cannot be sustained.
Independent claim 21 stands rejected as being
unpatentable over Spann in view of Groenewald. It is the
examiner’s position that it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to contour the body support surface
of Spann “to prevent the body from slipping along the inclined
surface of Spann” (Answer, page 5). However, Spann utilizes
all five surfaces of the body support (column 2, lines 37-41;
in Figures 1-4), and teaches that “this placement of the block
also provides for a wide base surface against the table with
resulting increase in stability” (column 2, lines 49-51).
Therefore, contouring the Spann block would seem adversely to
affect the desired operation of the device, which in our view
must be considered a disincentive to one of ordinary skill in
the art to modify it in the manner proposed by the examiner.
Thus, a prima facie case of obviousness is not established and
the rejection of claim 21 and claims 22-24, which depend
therefrom, cannot be sustained.
The same holds true of the rejection of independent claim
25 and dependent claims 26 and 27, which have been rejected on
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