Appeal No. 98-3292
Application 08/611,848
key pad of Goldenberg and to the elastomeric shock pad (42) in
the lower portion of the housing (40) of Goldenberg, urging
that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art to combine the teachings of Goldenberg with the
keypad/keyboard of Grant “for the advantage of the shock
absorbing keys” (final rejection, page 6). Even if such a
combination were made, we must agree with appellants that the
resulting structure would not be that set forth in appellants’
claims 12, 14, 15 and 17 on appeal, wherein the first, second
and third sets of keys are “all integrally formed on one
contiguous keypad,” as such terminology has been interpreted
by this panel of the Board above. For that reason, we will
not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 12, 14, 15 and
17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
In rejecting dependent claim 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Grant, Goldenberg and Roth, the
examiner has relied upon the teachings in Roth concerning its
use of conductive carbon ink pads (410), urging that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use
such pads in Grant as modified by Goldenberg. Again, since we
see nothing in the collective teachings of the applied
references which would have rendered obvious the one-piece,
integrally formed, contiguous keypad defined in appellants’
claims 12 and 13, we will not sustain the examiner’s
rejection.
Under the provisions of 37 CFR 1.196(b), we enter the
following new ground of rejection against all of the claims on
appeal.
Claims 1 through 4, 6 through 15 and 17 through 20 are
rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, as failing
to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject
matter which appellants regard as their invention. More
specifically, as we noted supra, the recitation in each of the
claims on appeal concerning certain of the sets of keys
“residing on a first plane,” while another set of keys is said
to be “residing on a second plane” is indefinite, because
although the language of the claims clearly convey that the
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