Appeal No. 2002-0267 Page 10
Application No. 09/440,496
The rejection of claims 79 and 81, which place the entirety of Minnesota in one
of the sections, is not sustained.
Independent claim 82 sets forth the same basic invention as claims 64 and 76. It
contains the limitation of attaching the first and second portions of the board together
with flexible material which defines a gap between the sections. This type of
attachment means for display boards is disclosed by Ball, for the purpose of allowing
the leaves folded into accordion pleats for storage and then to be completely unfolded
to display all the coins at one time (column 1, lines 18-22). It is our view that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to separate the board sections in
the modified Penny Map and to attach them together in the manner required by claim
82 in view of the explicit advantages of such set forth by Ball. The applied references
thus establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject matter
recited in claim 82, and we will sustain the rejection of this claim and of claims 83, 88
and 89, which were grouped therewith.
The rejection of claims 82 and 84, which add the equal size and shape limitation,
is sustained for the reasons set forth above with regard to claims 72 and 74.
The rejection of claims 85 and 87, which add the limitation directed to Minnesota,
is not sustained.
In arriving at the foregoing decisions, we have carefully considered all of the
sixty-three pages of argument presented in the Brief and the Reply Brief. Except for the
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