Appeal No. 2004-1058
Application 09/584,053
IV. The 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection of claims 12 through 18, 20
and 22 through 29 as being unpatentable over Deneen in view of
Clements
Assuming (correctly) that Deneen might not meet the
limitations in the appealed claims relating to the furry pet, the
examiner turns to Clements to supply this deficiency.
Clements discloses a comb designed to remove loose hair and
other foreign matter from an animal to be groomed. The comb
includes a blade having a series of teeth formed with blunt tips
4 to avoid scratching the animal’s hide and sharp sides 2 and
roots 3 to take hold of and remove the loose hair and foreign
matter.
In proposing to combine Deneen and Clements, the examiner
concludes that it would have been obvious “to use the tool of
Deneen on a pet/animal since Clements teaches that such devices
are well known to remove loose hair from the animal” (second
final rejection, page 7). The devices respectively disclosed by
Deneen and Clements, however, embody distinct constructions for
the performance of decidedly different functions. In short,
Clements contains no teaching which would have suggested using
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