Appeal No. 2002-2047 Page 12
Application No. 09/348,400
establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject matter of claim
81, and we will not sustain the rejection.
Independent claim 82 includes a truck and means for moving it, and therefore
suffers from the problem of Umeda being non-analogous art. In addition, however,
claim 82 requires the transfer means discussed above with regard to claim 81. For the
reasons we set forth in refusing to sustain the rejections of claim 1 and 81, we also will
not sustain the rejection of claim 82 or, it follows, of claims 83 and 84, which depend
from claim 82 and stand rejected on the same grounds.
The Rejection Based Upon Robin, Umeda, Heinz and Rosenfeld
This rejection is directed to independent claims 77, 78, 90 and 96, and
dependent claims 79 and 80. It is the examiner’s view in this rejection that all of the
subject matter recited would have been obvious in view of the combined teachings of
Robin, Umeda and Heinz, except for the requirement that the gripping device have first
and second pairs of gripping jaws. However, the examiner has taken the position that
this structure is taught by Rosenfeld, and it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to replace the suction device for removing laundry articles disclosed in
Robin with the Rosenfeld device. As was the case with the other rejection, our
conclusion that Umeda is non-analogous art causes this rejection also to be fatally
defective.
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