Appeal No. 98-0516
Application No. 08/400,328
meets this limitation of claim 15, for it “controls” the
maximum height of the container being lifted in that it causes
the container to cease elevating at a certain point in the
lifting cycle, which would constitute the “maximum” height,
and that is all that is required by this language of the
claim. It is our further view that all of the other structure
recited in claim 15 appears to be disclosed or taught by
Edelhoff, including the claimed control system (see pages 5
and 6 of the Edelhoff translation), with Tonsor being
confirmatory of the fact that such a control arrangement was
known in the art at the time of the appellants’ invention.
This leads us to conclude that the combined teachings of
Edelhoff and Tonsor establish a prima facie case of
obviousness with regard to the subject matter of this claim,
and the rejection of claim 15 therefore is sustained. Since
the appellants have chosen to group dependent claims 18-21
with claim 15, the rejection of these claims also is
sustained. The same is true for claim 22 which, although
rejected on the basis of Edelhoff, Tonsor and Bayne, was
grouped with claim 15.
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