Appeal No. 2004-0365 Page 5
Application No. 10/105,505
player does buy the plant, he places one of his property
chips 68 in the groove 67 of that manufacturing plant section
to indicate his ownership thereof.
We observe, at the outset, that claim 1 is directed to a game, not to the method
of playing a game, and that the indicia on a game board, such as that of Purlia,
represent to the players of the game whatever the players understand them to
represent under the rules of the game. Thus, the manufacturing plant sections of
Purlia’s game board meet the limitations of the recited “indicia” in claim 1 regardless of
the rules of Purlia’s game. Moreover, even under the disclosed rules of Purlia’s game,
we consider the manufacturing plant sections to be representative of a plurality of tasks
(deciding whether to try to purchase the plant, spinning the wheel to determine how
much the plant will cost, paying the money to purchase the plant and placing a property
chip on the plant section to indicate his ownership of that plant) that collectively form a
plurality of deliverables (the purchased plants).
The examiner concedes that Purlia lacks a first die and a second die as recited
in claim 1 but, for the reasons stated on page 3 of the answer, determines that it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of appellant’s invention
to modify Purlia to use a pair of dice for chance selection of movement and determining
the cost of a task (e.g., the purchase of a plant). Appellant has not contested this
determination in the brief but, rather, argues that Purlia does not teach or suggest a
project management game that includes “indicia representing a plurality of tasks that
collectively form a plurality of deliverables to be completed and to be managed by a
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