Appeal No. 97-0165 Page 4
Application No. 08/222,808
path” through which a truck may be driven by a driver as
defined in claim 7. In their reply brief, appellants also
argue that the examiner has, in effect, alluded to a new ground
of rejection based on inoperability of the invention because
the examiner questioned the specific values of energy and
current recited in claim 7.
First, with regard to appellants’ allegation of a new
ground of rejection applied by the examiner, the examiner has
made no formal new ground of rejection based on inoperability
of the invention and does not appear to question the
operability of the claimed invention. Accordingly, we offer no
opinion with regard to operability and we assume the claimed
invention to be operable for its intended purpose.
It appears to us that the examiner is contending that the
specific values of energy and current recited in the claim are
easily obtained, or calculated, through the use of Lambert’s
law, based on the particular material of the truck or container
being inspected and, therefore, there would have been nothing
unobvious about the specifically claimed values. While
appellants dispute any allegation of inoperability of the
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