Appeal No. 2004-1218
Application No. 09/956,195
The claims on appeal stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
as unpatentable over Morse, for the reasons set forth in the final
Office action dated Nov. 1, 2002 (Paper No. 6), with evidentiary
support from Chapman and Conville (Answer, page 3). We affirm this
rejection essentially for the reasons stated in the final Office
action, the Answer, and those reasons set forth below.
OPINION
The examiner finds that Morse discloses a card viewer having a
rectangular reflective surface 3 with a transparent plastic top
wall 16, corresponding to the claimed easel portion, mounted at an
acute angle (30°) with respect to the reflective surface (Answer,
page 3, citing the final Office action (Paper No. 6), which itself
refers to the first Office action of Paper No. 4). The examiner
recognizes that Morse does not explicitly disclose that his card
holder is collapsible or may be disassembled (Paper No. 6, page
2).1 However, the examiner concludes that it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in this art to disassemble the
1The examiner has not presented any analysis of the
“assembly means” as a “means plus function” under 35 U.S.C.
§ 112, ¶6 (see Paper Nos. 4 and 6 as well as the Answer). See
Al-Site Corp. v. VSI Int’l Inc., 174 F.3d 1308, 1318, 50 USPQ2d
1161, 1166 (Fed. Cir. 1999). However, appellant has not
presented any argument that Morse fails to disclose or suggest
this claimed limitation (see the Brief and Reply Brief in their
entirety).
3
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