Appeal No. 2003-1982 Page 4
Application No. 09/620,830
filling the cavity with the required fill and introducing water into the fill. However, the
examiner has concluded that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to modify Ferguson in such a manner as to meet the terms of claim 1, in view of the
teachings of Kosinski, taking “official notice that it is old and notorious[ly] well known in
the horticultural arts to partially fill a container with a potting medium, place a post in the
medium, and continue to fill the container with the potting medium, and then introduce
water into the medium” (Paper No. 11, page 2). The appellants argue that the claimed
steps are not taught by the references, and that suggestion does not exist for
combining the teachings of the references in the manner proposed by the examiner.
Ferguson is directed to a plant support device and display stand. The reference
discloses, along with other elements, a potted plant container C filled with soil and an
elongated plant support rod 10 that is “insertable into the soil at the base of a growing
plant” (column 2, lines 6 and 7) “to a sufficient depth to be self-supporting in the soil”
(column 3, lines 9 and 10). Ferguson is not concerned with seating the end of a post.
Moreover, even if rod 10 were considered to be a post, contrary to the position taken by
the examiner, from our perspective none of the steps recited in claim 1 are disclosed or
taught by Ferguson. Whereas claim 1 requires the steps of “providing a cavity for
receiving the end of the post” and “placing the end of the post within the cavity and
establishing a space within the cavity disposed to one side of the post,” Ferguson does
not first form a cavity, but merely inserts rod 10 into the soil at the base of a growing
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007