Appeal No. 1997-0074 Application No. 08/123,092 face and the insert in a single cover forming operation so that . . . [both] will be covered by the same material" (Answer, page 5), after which he concludes that "it therefore would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to use the vacuum cover application technique of Mills to apply the covering to the handle and panel face in the processes of Ashtiani-Zarandi and Wilfert" (Answer, page 6). Finally, the examiner applies Michel, which is directed to a method of forming articles such as pallets, opining that it would have been obvious, in view of Michel, to draw and secure the vacuum-formed cover of a handle around the handle “because Mills shows this to be possible and Michel teaches the use of vacuum for drawing a covering around a substrate” (Answer, pages 6-7). The first step in the method recited in claim 1 is providing a structural substrate that has a handle hole, and the second is to attach a handle frame to the substrate so that it spans the hole. These two steps clearly are not explicitly disclosed or taught by either Ashtiani-Zarandi or Wilfert, which are the only two references that even disclose a handle, nor is there reason to believe that such inherently 6Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007