Appeal No. 1998-1825
Application No. 08/658,014
claim 8 on appeal.
We also do not agree with the examiner's assertion that
appellants' recitation in the claims on appeal of "'support
means for receiving a reel of teartape so that the reel can
rotate as the tape is drawn from the reel by said moving
packaging material' relates to an intended method of using the
apparatus" (answer, pg. 7). The prior art must be capable of
performing this "means-plus-function" statement. We do not
find any capability in Huck or Asar, separately or combined,
which allows the supply reel to be rotated through the
movement of another web as appellants' "means-plus-function"
limitation dictates.
For the above reasons, we will not sustain the examiner's
rejection on independent claim 8 on appeal under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) based on Huck in view of Asar.
As to claims 9 and 10, which depend directly and
indirectly from independent claim 8, we have reviewed the
patents to Martin, Slezak and Keilhack, additionally applied
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