Appeal No. 2002-2341
Application 09/466,277
second endplates each includes “at least two distally located
alignment slots for providing alignment of said first and second
card cage [sic, cardcage] sides.”5 As argued by appellants’ on
page 9 of the brief, no such alignment slots are present in
Marks, and the examiner’s position (answer, page 5) that “[i]t is
inherent that the workpieces are aligned prior to their
connection with rivets (16),” does nothing to account for the
missing alignment slots. Accordingly, the examiner’s rejection
of claim 51 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) based on Marks is not
sustained.
Claims 33 through 36 each depend from claim 51 either
directly or indirectly and have been rejected by the examiner
under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Marks taken in combination with
various other prior art references, e.g., Straccia (for claims 33
and 34), DeWilde (for claim 35) and Watanabe (for claims 35 and
36). We have reviewed the references to Straccia, DeWilde and
Watanabe, but find nothing therein which provides for or
otherwise renders obvious the “alignment slots” we have found to
5 The alignment slots are shown in Figure 2 of the
application drawings as elements (57).
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007