Appeal No. 2001-0680
Application No. 09/141,637
support” (answer, page 5) in view of Ritter, and that it would have
been further obvious to provide the container of Hawkins with a
raised floor portion in view of Moore.
At the outset, it is not clear to us that the rim of Hawkins’
chamber pot is intended to be sat upon in use. In this regard,
Hawkins does not disclose that the user sits on the chamber pot
when using it, and appellant’s argument on page 4 of the brief that
the width of the rim of the pot is too narrow for it to be used as
a seat is reasonable.3 Accordingly, the examiner’s denomination of
element A of Hawkins as a “seat portion” and element C as a
“rim/seat” throughout the answer is not well taken.
As to the proposed initial modification of Hawkins, the
examiner’s position that it would have been obvious to support the
funnel shaped cover A of the Figure 5 embodiment of Hawkins at both
the floor and the rim of the chamber pot is not persuasive in the
absence of evidence to support such a position. While we
appreciate that the Figure 2 and Figure 5 embodiments of Hawkins
show the cover A being supported at the rim and floor of the
container, respectively, we discern no teaching or suggestion in
3Interestingly, the examiner’s tertiary reference to Moore
also does not indicate that the rim of the “chamber vessel”
thereof is intended to be sat upon in use.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007