Appeal No. 2001-0386 Page 7
Application No. 08/614,358
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
All the claims under appeal define a system that includes
a plurality of water collection means to capture overhead
water and direct the overhead water to plant containers
wherein the water collection means has an outer mating
perimeter having mating edges configured to abut in a
continuous, contiguous manner with corresponding mating edges
of other water collection means, and where the mating edges of
each water collection means are abutted with mating edges of
adjacent other water collection means to form a continuous
water capture surface such that all overhead water is captured
and directed into the plant containers such that no water
falls between adjacent plant containers. However, these
limitations are not suggested by the applied prior art. In
fact, in the rejections before us in this appeal (final
rejection, p. 3), the examiner did not even find these
limitations to have been obvious at the time the invention was
made to a person of ordinary skill in the art. Instead, the
examiner found, at best, that it would have been obvious at
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