Appeal No. 1998-2610 Page 2
Application No. 08/451,950
by machine so that if it should, for example, fall into a
batch of cereal at a processing plant, the earplug can be
easily retrieved. The appellant's earplug is embedded with
very small metallic particles to enable such detection.
Claim 18, which is representative for our purposes,
follows:
18. A hearing protection earplug comprised of
materials with embedded metallic particles
whereby said hearing protection earplug may be
easily machine detectable.
The references relied on in rejecting the claims follow:
Yoshii 4,652,702 Mar. 24,
1987
Yoshimi 5,396,563 Mar. 7, 1995
Tokarz 5,207,827 May 4, 1993.
Claim 18 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
anticipated by Yoshii. Claims 18 and 19 stand rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(a) as anticipated by Yoshimi and under §
102(b) as anticipated by Tokarz. Rather than repeat the
arguments of the appellant or examiner in toto, we refer the
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