Appeal No. 2002-2180
Application No. 09/089,011
concerned with notifying persons of the impending arrival of a transportation vehicle,
such as a bus, plane, or fishing vessel. Jones col. 1, ll. 5-10. Although the examiner, in
combining the reference with Conmy, analogizes the school bus driver in Jones’
preferred embodiment to a “user” being late for an appointment, Jones is directed to
vehicular transportation. As illustrated by the reference’s preferred embodiment, the
school bus, rather than the driver, is the entity of interest. If, for example, more than
one driver shared the duty of driving a particular school bus route, it would be of no
moment whether a particular driver was or was not present at a scheduled stop.
We are in ultimate agreement with appellants that Conmy and Jones have been
improperly combined so as to meet the terms of the instant claims. We do not sustain
the Section 103 rejection of claims 2-9, 12-16, 18-23, 29, and 33-35 as being
unpatentable over Conmy and Jones.
Nor can we sustain the rejection of claims 10, 11, and 24-28 stand under 35
U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Conmy, Jones, and Tognazzini. Although
Tognazzini appears to be more pertinent than Jones to appellants’ invention, the
teachings of the tertiary reference as applied do not remedy the deficiencies we have
identified in the basic combination of Conmy and Jones.
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