Appeal No. 1999-2132 Page 9
Application No. 08/672,856
The “drive rollers” referred to by the examiner are
actually described by Tekavec as gear assembly 54. As
indicated supra, the gear assembly 54 performs two disclosed
functions, namely, it pulls the stock material 22 through the
machine and it deforms or coins the stock to form the
cushioning pad. Like appellants (brief, page 10), we know of
no reason why one of ordinary skill in the art would have
disposed additional coining gears along the arcuate path
defined by the post-cutting constraining assembly 58, after
the pad has been completely formed and severed into a desired
length, absent the teachings in appellants’ specification.
While Mistyurik does teach a series of upper and lower
rollers disposed about an arcuate path for conveying labels3
from a printer to a stacker device, we know of no reason why
one of ordinary skill in the art would have combined the
label-input conveyer 14 with a cushioning conversion machine
or rearranged the spacing between the upper rollers 42 and the
We have some difficulty describing the rollers 42 of Mistyurik as3
“drive elements” (e.g., claim 1), since Mistyurik specifically teaches that
rollers 42 are not powered for rotation by motor 31. Instead, rollers 42 are
rotated by frictional engagement with driven rollers 22 and 27.
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007