Appeal No. 2001-0528 Page 8
Application No. 08/892,348
Boe, 355 F.2d 961, 148 USPQ 507 (CCPA 1966); and In re Preda,
401 F.2d 825, 159 USPQ 342 (CCPA 1968).
With this as background, we find ourselves in agreement
with the examiner's rationale (answer, pp. 5-6 and 11-17),
which we incorporate as our own, that claims 21 and 22 are
unpatentable over the teachings of Schonert and Kofahl. In
our view, the combined teachings of Schonert and Kofahl would
have made it obvious at the time the invention was made to a
person of ordinary skill in the art to have included in
Schonert's modular wall framing system a quad wall module, a
door module and a window module.
With respect to claim 23, we agree with the appellant's
argument that a person of ordinary skill in the art would not
consider Schonert's plate straps 44 (see Figures 4 and 6) to
be "alignment tools" since they do not clearly function to
align various modules. In our view, as shown in Figures 4 and
6 of Schonert, the aligning of the modules is done by abutting
the modules together and then securing the abutted modules
together with the plate straps 44. Accordingly, the subject
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