Appeal No. 2004-1282
Application No. 10/037,668
O'Brien and Official Notice, as well as the combination of Brown,
O'Brien and Official Notice.
Appellants submit at page 8 of the Brief that the examiner's
grouping of the appealed claims "is satisfactory to applicant
[sic, applicants]." Since the examiner has determined that all
the appealed claims stand or fall together, we will limit our
consideration to the examiner's rejections of appealed claim 1.
We have thoroughly reviewed the respective positions
advanced by appellants and the examiner. In so doing, we find
that the examiner's rejections under § 102 are not well-founded.
However, we are in complete agreement with the examiner that the
claimed subject matter would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art within the meaning of § 103 in view of the
applied prior art. Accordingly, we will sustain the examiner's
§ 103 rejections for essentially those reasons expressed in the
Answer.
We consider first the examiner's rejection under § 102 over
either of the Rappaport patents. The references, like
appellants, disclose a system wherein an individual, or batter,
activates a switch which transmits a signal to a batting machine-
type apparatus which propels a ball toward the individual upon
reception of the signal. Unlike the present invention, the
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