Appeal No. 1998-1912
Application No. 08/780,744
receptacles of a conveyor (claims 1-8 and 21), and to an
apparatus for the practice of said method (claims 9-20 and
22). Claims 1 and 9 are representative of the claimed method
and apparatus, and copies of these claims can be found in an
appendix to appellants’ main brief.
The single prior art reference relied upon by the
examiner in support of rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) and
35 U.S.C.
§ 103 is:
Knudsen et al. 4,526,562 Jul. 2, 1985
Claims 1, 2, 4-7, 9, 12-14, 16 and 18-20 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Knudsen.
Claims 3, 8, 10, 11, 15, 17, 21 and 22 stand rejected
under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Knudsen.1
Reference is made to appellants’ main and reply briefs
(Paper Nos. 10 and 12, respectively) and to the examiner’s
answer (Paper No. 11) for the respective positions of
1In the answer (page 5), the examiner also referred to
“the Great Britain patent” (presumably UK Patent Application
2,132,975), but that reference has been given no consideration
since it was not positively included in the rejection. Ex
parte Raske, 28 USPQ2d 1304, 1305 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1993).
2
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