Appeal No. 1998-2726
Application 08/440,991
we will not sustain the rejection of claim 1 or of claims 2-8
and 13, which depend therefrom.
Claims 9 and 10, which also depend from claim 1, stand
rejected as being unpatentable over the references cited
against claim 1 taken further in view of Courtney, which is
cited for its teaching of supplying water to the plants in a
growing module. Be that as it may, Courtney does not
alleviate the shortcoming discussed above with regard to the
application of the teachings of the European reference and
Ryder to claim 1. Thus, a prima facie case of obviousness is
lacking with regard to claims 9 and 10, and we will not
sustain this rejection.
Likewise, the Swiss reference, which was added to the
basic combination of references against dependent claims 11
and 12, Tomarin, added against dependent claim 14, and Aoyama,
added with regard to dependent claim 15, fail to cure the
defect explained above with regard to the rejection of
independent claim 1. This being the case, these rejections
also cannot be sustained.
Claim 16 has been rejected as being unpatentable over the
European patent in view of Tomarin. As expressed in this
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