Appeal No. 2004-0190 Page 3
Application No. 09/479,531
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and
the appellant regarding the above-noted rejections, we make reference to the Answer
(Paper No. 18) for the examiner's reasoning in support of the rejections, and to the Brief
(Paper No. 17) and Reply Brief (Paper No. 19) for the appellant's arguments
thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellant's specification and claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
The Rejections Under Section 102(a)
The first of these rejections is that claim 26 is anticipated1 by Whitehurst. Claim
26 recites a structural guide system for building a toy multi-layer simulated structure
formed of stacked layers of units. The system comprises a “plurality of structural unit
guides,” each associated with one layer of the structure, with each guide including a
1Anticipation is established only when a single prior art reference discloses, expressly or under the
principles of inherency, each and every element of the claimed invention. See, for example, RCA Corp. v.
Applied Digital Data Systems, Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). A
reference anticipates a claim if it discloses the claimed invention such that a skilled artisan could take its
teachings in combination with his own knowledge of the particular art and be in possession of the
invention. In re Graves, 69 F.3d 1147, 1152, 36 USPQ2d 1697, 1701 (Fed. Cir. 1995), cert. denied,
116 S.Ct. 1362 (1996), quoting from In re LeGrice, 301 F.2d 929, 936, 133 USPQ 365, 372 (CCPA 1962).
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