Appeal No. 97-3347
Application No. 08/302,864
he respective viewpoints of appellants and the examiner. As a
consequence of our review, we make the determinations which
follow.
We reverse the examiner’s rejection of claim 1. It
follows that we likewise reverse the rejection of claims 2
through 8 since these claims stand or fall with claim 1, as
previously indicated.
As is quite evident from a reading of claim 1,
appellants’ invention expressly requires a mask made from a
thin sheet having “an opaque, peripheral region which, across
a transitional zone, gradually fades out into a transparent,
central area.”
We turn now to the examiner’s evidence of obviousness.
We find that the patent to Sibley discloses a photograph
album leaf construction. The leaf 10 comprises a single
flexible sheet folded on itself to form front and back pages
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