Appeal No. 97-3030
Application No. 08/254,181
will sustain this rejection. It is our view that Hawkins is
merely cumulative to the teachings of Pons Pons because the
latter already teaches the use of protruding metal prongs for
insertion into a 120VAC wall outlet wherein the prongs are
connected to the heating element. When adapting the porcelain
enamel metal substrate of Hedden to the Pons Pons device as
the heating element, it would have been obvious to the artisan
that the connection from the power supply must be made to
conductive strips of the porcelain enamel metal substrate in
order to provide electrical power for heating the substrate.
As far as the prongs being "mechanically connected" to the
porcelain enamel metal substrate, the artisan would have been
well aware of the equally obvious alternatives of either
mechanically connecting the prongs, supplying the power, to
the substrate, or electrically connecting the prongs to the
substrate via conductive wire. Similarly, with regard to
claim 8, although the applied references do not explicitly
disclose rivets, the skilled artisan would have known that one
of many equally obvious ways to make a mechanical connection,
e.g., of prongs to the substrate, would have been the
application of rivets. Clearly, the artisan must be presumed
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