Appeal No. 2002-1798
Application 09/238,804
assignee of the present invention, under the trademark SMART, and
an attached Exhibit 2 showing a sample quotation showing a price
of $250 for the violator alert feature (Paper No. 17), received
May 7, 2001, with a discussion of this evidence (Paper No. 16),
received May 7, 2001. In the next Advisory Action (Paper No. 18)
entered June 4, 2001, the examiner checked the boxes that "The
request for reconsideration has been considered but does NOT
place the application in condition for allowance because:" and
filled in the blank that "The claims, as stands, are not
patentably distinguished over the obviousness rejection as taught
[by] Strickland (US 5,231,393) in view of Haeri (US 5,659,290)."
The examiner did not provide a written explanation addressing the
merits of the Hocker declaration or the earlier SML report as
part of the obviousness analysis.
Thus, appellants timely submitted objective evidence of
nonobviousness, which was apparently considered by the examiner.
However, there is absolutely no written discussion of the
objective evidence in the record and, in particular, absolutely
no written discussion in the examiner's answer. The examiner's
answer is conspicuously silent in response to appellants'
arguments that the objective evidence was not addressed. Since
objective evidence must always be considered as part of the
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