Appeal No. 2002-0555
Application 09/361,514
our review, we have made the determination that the examiner’s
rejection of claims 1, 3 and 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) will not
be sustained. Our reasons follow.
The examiner’s position (answer, pages 4-5) is that Lee
discloses a computer assembly including all of the subject matter
of claims 1, 3 and 4, except that it does not teach a circuit
board assembly with a connector that extends through the
elongated opening of a mounting panel as required in claim 1. To
account for this difference, the examiner asserts that such a
connector arrangement is an “expedient in the art” (answer, page
5) and that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art to provide such an arrangement (presumably in the
computer assembly of Lee) so as to permit connections between the
electronic circuit board assembly and a peripheral device to be
made without taking the computer assembly apart.
In addition to disputing the examiner’s above-noted
treatment of the connector arrangement limitation in claim 1 on
appeal, appellant points out that claim 1 defines the computer
assembly therein as including a retention bracket (22) having an
elongated panel (24), a plurality of fastener openings (38) and a
4
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