Appeal No. 2004-0120
Application No. 09/898,334
stated in the Answer, the final Office action (Paper No. 6), and
those reasons set forth below.
OPINION
The examiner finds that Dottel discloses a binder comprising
a front member and back member with inside and outside surfaces;
a fastener and spine connecting means for holding the front and
back members together; where the cover is movable by a hinge
arrangement; a binding means for binding sheets and a label
attached to an outside surface of the spine (Paper No. 6, page
3). The examiner recognizes that Dottel fails to disclose a
label being a whiteboard (id.).1 Therefore the examiner applies
Lazar for the disclosure of a whiteboard label2 which can be
attached to an article to provide a readily changeable label
(id.). From these findings, the examiner concludes that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify
the binder of Dottel to include the whiteboard label taught by
1As discussed above, we select claim 1 from the grouping of
rejected claims and decide this ground of rejection on the basis
of this claim alone. See 37 CFR § 1.192(c)(7)(2000).
2According to appellant, “‘[w]hiteboards’ are known and are
meant to devote [sic, denote] flat surface components, which
receive marker and similar writings and are readily erasable.”
Specification, page 6, ll. 10-12.
3
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