Appeal No. 2002-2206 Page 6
Application No. 09/054,211
deficiency, the examiner contends that it would have been obvious to one skilled in the
art to provide the apparatus of Guinard with such a plate in view of Morrison in order to
easily and effectively remove debris from the teeth and the spaces therebetween (see
answer, page 5).
Appellant does not dispute the examiner’s basic position that it would have been
obvious to provide a cleaning plate for Guinard’s comb, the cleaning plate having two
rows of apertures sized to receive the teeth of Guinard’s comb. Rather, appellant
argues that neither Guinard nor Morrison describes a comb having teeth sufficiently
closely spaced to remove nits and lice and that, even if Guinard’s comb were modified
by spacing the teeth more narrowly, it would not have been obvious to use the device of
Morrison to clean the comb, because such a device would be expected to be too weak
for use (brief, page 4).
We appreciate that neither Guinard nor Morrison discloses use of a comb for the
purpose of mechanical removal of pests and their eggs from hair and fur. While a
comb having more closely spaced teeth than that of Guinard might be more efficient
and thorough for removing some pests and their eggs from hair or fur, Guinard’s comb
is certainly capable, without modification, of trapping some pests and eggs in the
spaces between the teeth of the comb (note the close spacing illustrated in Guinard’s
Figure 1).
Additionally, for the reasons discussed above with regard to claim 13, we
consider the spacing of the teeth of Guinard’s comb to meet the limitation in claim 14 of
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007