Appeal No. 2004-0473 -6-
Application No. 10/034,527
The examiner’s position is unsound. More particularly, the examiner has failed to
advance any convincing line of reasoning as to why, or how, one of ordinary skill in the art
would have modified Price in view of Smith and/or Townsend to arrive at the claimed
scoring device, which comprises, among other things, scorekeeping spots for keeping the
teams’ scores for the game of Euchre and indicia of the four types of card suits that
identify both what suit is trump and which team named that suit as trump. Price is directed
to a scoring device particularly directed to persons engaged in playing the game of Bridge
and does not include indicia for indicated which suit is trump, much less which team
named trump. In this regard, the “heart” and “spade” areas noted by the examiner are
merely for storing unused scoring pegs. As to Smith, while this reference discloses indicia
of the four types of card suits and means for identifying which suit is trump (i.e., the sliding
point 27 along the right side of the card suit areas 20) during the course of play of the
game of Bridge, there is no teaching of a corresponding identifying means arranged along
the other side of the card suit areas, as called for in the last paragraph of claim 1. In this
regard, the legend 30 and sliding pointer 33 to the left of the areas 20 do not suffice.
Townsend at best teaches the concept of using a scoring device for keeping score of the
game of Euchre, but this broad concept does not make up for the collective deficiencies of
Price and Smith.
Accordingly, we see no basis in the combined teachings of the applied references
for their combination in a manner that would have resulted in the claimed subject matter
and consider that the examiner has engaged in a hindsight reconstruction of appellant’s
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