Appeal No. 2004-0100
Application No. 09/650,843
VI. The rejection of claims 23, 24, and 25 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Duer in view of Fumero
With respect to claim 23, claim 23 depends upon claim 20.
Claim 23 requires that the method of claim 20 comprises forming
the bullet deceleration chamber from a plurality of generally
flat pieces of steel.
On pages 3-4 of the Office action of Paper No. 7, the
examiner’s position is that Duer discloses a single bottom mesh
plate. However, Fumero teaches to use a plurality of plates.
The examiner concludes that it would been have obvious to
substitute Fumero’s plurality of plates for Duer’s single bottom
mesh plate.
Beginning on page 14 of brief, appellant correctly points
out that the combination of references cited by the examiner is
inappropriate in that the express teachings of Duer indicate
that the basket is used to remove bullets without removing any
filler material. Appellant correctly concludes that
substituting the basket of Duer with steel plates would disallow
such a function. We agree, and therefore reverse this rejection
with respect to claim 23.
With respect to claim 24, claim 24 depends upon claim 23
and further requires an additional limitation with respect to
the generally flate pieces of steel. Therefore, for the same
reasons that we reversed of claim 23, we reverse the rejection
of claim 24.
10
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007