Appeal No. 2001-0225
Application 09/085,021
18, the examiner concludes that it would have been obvious at
the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary
skill in the art “to provide first and second lines of weakness
formed in the sheet adjacent and spaced from the side edges in
the Baker et al. process, as taught by Ogawa, so that the side
margins may be removed after processing” (answer, page 4). In
response to the appellants’ argument (see pages 12 and 13 in
the main brief and page 6 in the reply brief) that this
modification would destroy the essence of Baker’s envelopes by
removing the side flaps from the mail pieces, the examiner
further explains that
[t]he feed format of Ogawa includes lines of weakness
separating the product and feed strips with holes
. . . . These types of strips would inherently be
added by one of ordinary skill in the art if the
apparatus of Baker et al. were converted to a
continuous feed format such as shown in the Ogawa
apparatus [answer, pages 7 and 8].
If the Baker apparatus were converted to a continuous feed
format as proposed by the examiner, the resulting method would
not meet the limitation in claim 18 requiring the feeding of
the intermediates one at a time from the tray through the laser
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