Appeal No. 2000-2015
Application 08/843,060
In rejecting claims 1 through 5 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
on the basis of the collective teachings of Kelly and Ward it
is the examiner’s position (final rejection, page 3), that
Kelly shows all of the elements recited except for the light
source being spaced a slight distance from the rod tip free
end. To address this difference, the examiner turns to Ward,
urging that this reference discloses a fishing rod (10) with a
light source (46) located on the rod towards a free end
thereof and spaced a slight distance apart from a tip of the
free end. From these teachings, the examiner has concluded
that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art “to provide Kelly with the light source mounted a
slight distance from the rod tip as shown by Ward since the
exact location of the light is a matter of design choice to be
determined by routine experimentation.”
Having reviewed and evaluated the applied references, we
are of the opinion that the examiner’s position regarding the
purported obviousness of claims 1 through 5 on appeal
represents a classic case of the examiner using impermissible
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