Appeal No. 2005-0352 Page 5
Application No. 09/727,134
In the final rejection (pp. 4-5) and the answer (pp. 4-5), the examiner set forth his
rationale as to why dependent claims 5 to 7 were unpatentable over the applied prior
art.
The appellants have not specifically contested this rejection in the brief apart
from these claims' dependency from claim 1. In the obviousness rejection before us in
this appeal, the examiner determined that it would have been obvious at the time the
invention was made to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have replaced Wiegert's
feed chains 18, 19 with tined wheels as taught by Pottinger and Thompson. The
appellants have not pointed out how the claimed subject matter distinguishes from the
so-modified device of Wiegert. Accordingly, we summarily sustain the rejection of
claims 5 to 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
REMAND
We remand the application to the examiner to consider if the combination of
Wiegert in view of Thompson and Pottinger as applied in the affirmed rejection of
dependent claims 5 to 7 is applicable to claims 1 to 4, 20 and 21.
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