Appeal No. 1999-1660
Application No. 08/444,242
that recording sleep and awake times are "obvious uses of the
disclosed method of the patent in view of a variety of
applications of the timer disclosed therein.... The device
and associated method may thus be used in any application
where time measuring is required with
a hand-held timer." The examiner continues (Final Rejection,
page 3) that
use of the device of Forbath is not limited to any
particular mental state of the user. Thus, the
method may be practiced in the manner disclosed to
measure time periods when the person is awake or
asleep, or engaged in other activity if switch 14 is
actuated previously. The involuntary action of
falling asleep of the user subsequent to actuation
of the timer switch in Forbath would be within the
ordinary and usual range of choices for such an
individual. The step of falling asleep as claimed,
therefore, cannot serve to provide any patentable
subject matter to the otherwise known method.
The examiner has essentially disregarded the claimed
method steps and focused solely on the device used to
implement the method. Since Forbath discloses a timer with a
user-activated switch, the examiner concludes that the
remaining claim limitations (i.e., those directed to the
method per se) would have been obvious.
All of the claims are directed to methods (or processes).
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