Appeal No. 2002-0296 Page 9
Application No. 09/248,553
"consisting of" in claim 1 and the claims under appeal are definite as required by the
second paragraph of 35 U.S.C. § 112.
For the reasons set forth above, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1
and 3 to 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second paragraph, is reversed.
The obviousness rejections
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 1 and 3 to 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
All the claims under appeal require the license plate cover to consist of a single,
flat, rigid, solid mar-resistant plate of optically transparent plastic having a thickness of
about 0.5 inch. However, these limitations are not suggested by the applied prior art.
In that regard, while DeLaquil does teach a transparent license plate cover made from
acrylic or polycarbonate material, DeLaquil does not teach or suggest a license plate
cover consisting of a rigid transparent plastic having a thickness of about 0.5 inch. To
supply this omission in the teachings of the applied prior art, the examiner made
determinations (answer, pp. 4 and 5) that a thickness of 0.5 inch would have been
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