Appeal No. 2005-0583
Application No. 10/116,494
1. A swimming pool debris trap having an externally
actuatable venting mechanism for reducing pressure or vacuum in
the trap.
2. A trap as claimed in claim 1, comprising a lid and a
canister, the lid carrying the venting mechanism.
4. A trap as claimed in claim 2, the venting mechanism
having a venting handle for actuating the venting mechanism.
5. A trap as claimed in claim 4, the lid having a lid
handle.
14. A trap as claimed in claim 2, the canister having a
boss, the lid having lugs clamping the boss for holding the lid
to the canister in a trap-closed state, contacting surfaces of
the lug with the boss in the trap-closed state being horizontal.
The references relied upon by the examiner in the section
102 and section 103 rejections before us are:
Wilkes 5,308,386 May 3, 1994
Hayes 5,435,339 Jul. 25, 1995
Claims 1, 2 and 4 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as
being anticipated by Wilkes.1
1 By repeated inattention to detail, the examiner and his
conferees have unnecessarily complicated the status of the
section 102 rejection of dependent claim 14 as being anticipated
by Wilkes. Specifically, this rejection is expressly set forth
on page 2 of the final Office action notwithstanding a statement
on page 4 thereof indicating that the rejection has been
withdrawn. Although these conflicting aspects of the final
Office action were acknowledged on page 3 of the answer, the
status of the aforementioned rejection nevertheless was
confounded by the examiner and his conferees misidentifying the
applied reference. That is, the examiner and his conferees state
“Claim 14 is not anticipated by Hayes” (answer, page 3) whereas
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