Appeal No. 1997-4175
Application No. 07/805,703
OPINION
We have carefully reviewed the evidence before us,
including, inter alia, the arguments of appellant and the
examiner and the applied references and we conclude, based on
such evidence, that the instant claimed subject matter would
not have been obvious, within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103.
The examiner applies Delembre and specifically points to
opening 6, indicating that Delembre does not specify the
opening to be a vertically or horizontally elongated slot.
However, the examiner relies on Wesselink for a vertically
elongated slot for evacuating or filling an arc tube with an
amalgam, concluding that the combination of these references
would have made the instant claimed subject matter obvious and
indicating that the claimed vertically or horizontally
elongated slot is a “design alternative to the circular
opening of Delembre” [answer-page 4].
We find various problems with the examiner’s position.
The circular opening in Delembre is not, in our view, a “slot”
and we fail to find any reason for the skilled artisan to have
made it so. Independent claim 20 requires this slot to have
“one edge depressed relative to the other edge so as to define
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