Appeal No. 2002-1222
Application 09/049,908
of the tissue webs from the respective parent rolls are driven by electric drive means. The
claimed method encompassed by claim 1 specifies certain components of the unwind system
including an unwind stand and a core placement table that rotatably supports the partially
unwound first parent roll, but does not specify the manner in which the two tissue webs are
bonded. In each claimed method, the leading edge of the tissue web from the second parent roll
can be transported with a thread-up conveyor as set forth in appealed claims 3 and 29.
The references relied on by the examiner are:
Focke et al. (Focke) 4,466,577 Aug. 21, 1984
Seki 4,735,372 Apr. 5, 1988
Mobley 4,944,470 Jul. 31, 1990
Baker 4,969,588 Nov. 13, 1990
Sohma 5,289,984 Mar. 1, 1994
Anderson 5,360,502 Nov. 1, 1994
The examiner has advanced the following grounds of rejection on appeal:
claims 1, 2, 9, 11 through 28 and 32 through 34 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over admitted prior art in appellants’ specification (page 1, lines 6-10 and 23-26,
and page 9, lines 29-30) in view of Anderson, Sohma and Seki (answer, pages 5-9);
claims 3, 4 and 29 through 31 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable
over admitted prior art in appellants’ specification (page 1, lines 6-10 and 23-26, and page 9,
lines 29-30) in view of Anderson, Sohma and Seki as applied to claims 1, 2 and 25 above and
further in view of Baker (answer, page 9);
claims 5, 6 and 10 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over admitted
prior art in appellants’ specification (page 1, lines 6-10 and 23-26, and page 9, lines 29-30) in
view of Anderson, Sohma and Seki as applied to claims 3 and 4 above and further in view of
Mobley (answer, pages 9-11); and
claims 7 and 8 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over admitted
prior art in appellants’ specification (page 1, lines 6-10 and 23-26, and page 9, lines 29-30) in
view of Anderson, Sohma and Seki as applied to claim 3 above and further in view of Focke
(answer, page 11).1
Appellants state in their brief that the appealed claims in each ground of rejection “do not
stand or fall together” (pages 9-10) but do not present arguments with respect to each of the
appealed claims specifying how each claim is nonobvious over the prior art based on the
1 The grounds of rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) and the judicially created doctrine of
obviousness-type double patenting involving Baggot et al ‘496 set forth in the final rejection
mailed September 19, 2000 (Paper No. 15; pages 2-7), have been withdrawn by the examiner in
the advisory action mailed February 9, 2001 (Paper No. 20). See also answer, page 2.
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