Appeal No. 1998-2179 Page 5
Application No. 08/433,231
Reist discloses an apparatus for the continuous winding-up or winding-off of
substantially flat products, such as printed products in an imbricated or shingled formation, into
a package or from a package (column 1, lines 9-20). The apparatus comprises a rotatably
driven winding core member 19 and a conveyor 16 which merges with a conveyor band or
belt arrangement 14 having deflection rolls or rollers 15 and 29 trained by a pair of conveyor
bands or belts 30 and 31. The conveyor band or belt arrangement 14 is mounted on a frame
28 which is upwardly biased by a spring 35 so that the conveyor bands or belts 30, 31 are
forced against the outer circumference of the product W wound about the core member 19. As
illustrated in Figure 1, products Z are conveyed in imbricated form via the conveyor 16 to the
conveyor band or belt arrangement 14 and transferred to the winding core member.
Turning first to the examiner's rejection of claims 12, 19 and 20, the examiner finds that
Newsome lacks a winding means as required by independent claim 12 but takes the position
that it would have been obvious to provide Newsome with a winding means, as taught by
Reist, for the purpose of winding the streams of blanks into rolls to facilitate the replacement
and transportation of the rolls (answer, page 4). With regard to this proposed modification of
Newsome, the appellant argues that
[t]o wind up the formation 11 shown in Figure 3 of the Newsome reference
makes no sense since the Newsome '896 patent teaches forming a uniform
product stream 11 in order to facilitate the subsequent processing. It would have
made no sense for a person skilled in the art to employ the apparatus as
proposed by the Newsome '896 patent to store again in a roll the documents
previously stored in stacks [brief, page 9].
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