Appeal No. 1997-2273
Application No. 08/320,585
specified inventory of items” (column 1, lines 56 through 64).
As with Colson, the examiner acknowledges (Answer, page 4)
that “Kimbrow does not specifically disclose the appellant’s
placement of the switches horizontally as disclosed by the
appellant.” The examiner concludes (Answer, page 4), however,
that “it is well known in the art to place switches in an
optimal location,” and that “[i]t would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
to employ switches horizontally because this allows for easy
eye hand coordination in inventory control.”
Although the examiner does address the employment of
“switches horizontally,” he never presents any rationale for
mounting such “switches horizontally” in shelves of a cabinet.
Accordingly, we agree with the appellant (Brief, page 8) that:
[N]one of the art cited by the Examiner discloses
the incorporation of switches into shelves, much
less that the switches and associated storage
locations be laid out in a way where one switch lies
adjacent each storage location. Moreover, appellant
believes that there would be no incentive in either
Colson ‘297, Kimbrow ‘910, or generally in the art,
which would suggest the claimed combination. Colson
‘297 specifically teaches that a stand-alone
keyboard which is not associated with any particular
storage location be used for inputting all required
inventory data. While Kimbrow suggests that
separate inventory devices may be distributed in a
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