Appeal No. 96-4181
Application 08/139,664
Appellants argue on pages 13 through 16 of the brief that Sakamoto fails to teach or suggest a
flexible workpiece assembly system having pallets containing more than one workpiece thereon nor the
communication of an error message identifying the location of the defect along with the nature of the
defect. We note that Appellants' claim 1 recites the following:
A flexible, workpiece assembly system for automatically performing operations on a
plurality of similar workpieces located on a pallet, comprising: a workcell for
performing operations to modify at least one of said plurality of similar workpieces
present on the pallet; ... means ... for detecting a defect in the assembly of the plurality
of similar workpieces and generating an error message indicative of the defect, the error
message including a first signal identifying, by location on the pallet, one of the plurality
of workpieces detected as having a defect and a second signal, associated with said
first signal, to indicate a nature of the defect detected therefor....
We note that the only other independent claim, claim 11, is a method claim which recites similar
limitations as above.
The Examiner states in the rejection that Sakamoto fails to teach assembling a plurality of similar
workpieces on a pallet as recited in Appellants' claims 1 and 11. The Examiner argues on that it would
have been obvious to those skilled in the art to modify the Sakamoto system to assemble more than one
part at an assembly station to obtain Appellant’s invention as recited in Appellants' claims 1 and 11.
We note that the Examiner has not addressed the limitation of having a means for detecting a defect in
the assembly of the plurality of similar workpieces and generating an error message indicative of the
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