Appeal No. 1998-3421
Application No. 08/646,995
Claims 1 through 12 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
~ 103 as being unpatentable over the Waste Management
publication (hereinafter the WMRR publication) in view of
Marshall. The examiner relies on the WMRR publication for
its teaching of a method of collecting and reusing garment
hangers made of plastic. He relies on the Marshall patent
for its teaching of removably mounting size-indicating caps
on garment hangers. Reference is made to the examinerŝ
answer for details of this rejection.
The examiner concedes that the WMRR publication lacks
a disclosure of size-indicating caps or other size indicia
for garment hangers and hence lacks a disclosure of
automatically removing such indicia from the hangers as
defined in claim 1. He nevertheless takes the position in
substance that it would have been obvious to employ
Marshallŝ plastic hangers with the size-indicating caps in
place of hangers lacking size indicia (see pages 4-5 of the
answer). The examiner also contends that it would have
been obvious to remove the size indicia from the hangers în
order to sort the hangers and size indicia for
3
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