Appeal No. 2004-1359
Application No. 09/875,831
opening. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have recognized that the size of the
supporting foot should not exceed the size of the circular opening.
Appellant argues that Frase does not understand “that each thickness of a helical
turn contributes to sizing of the diameter of the foot, so that a correlation can be achieved
between diameter size of the foot and an opening into which the foot can be positioned in
its attachment to the pallet.” (Response, p. 4).
Appellant’s argument is not persuasive. As stated above, Frase discloses that the
supporting posts are sized to be equal to the width of the pallet’s grill structure. Thus,
contrary to Appellant’s argument, Frase does recognize that the sizing of the helical turn
contributes to sizing of the diameter of the supporting foot.
Appellant argues that Frase teaches away from the seating of a supporting foot in a
cutout. (Reply Brief, p. 2).
The argument is not persuasive because it does not address the rejection as
presented by the Examiner. The Frase reference has not been cited for describing the
cutout opening.
Based on our consideration of the totality of the record before us, having evaluated
the prima facie case of obviousness in view of Appellant’s arguments, we conclude that
the subject matter of claim 3 would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the
-6-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007