Appeal No. 2005-0988
Application 09/878,592
by the examiner and involves a selection stage used for awarding
a number of game pieces based on the contestant correctly
selecting pricing indicia representing the price of four small
products or prizes. Each correct answer results in the winning
of a game piece to be used in the next stage of the game, wherein
the contestant drops the game pieces, one at a time, into a
Pachinko-type peg board and allows them to ricochet downwardly
through the pegs until the game piece lands in one of a plurality
of different denomination pay slots at the bottom of the board.
The contestant then wins, in addition to the prize in the initial
price guessing stage, the cumulative amount of cash indicated
after having dropped all of the game pieces through the Pachinko-
type peg board.
In rejecting claims 11 and 20 through 22 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) the examiner recognizes that the gaming machine in
Pierce lacks a bonus game like that specifically defined in, for
example, claim 21 on appeal, but concludes based on the
collective teachings of Pierce, Mayeroff and “Plinko” that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at
the time of appellant’s invention to substitute the popular
“PLINKO” game as played on the long-running television game show
“THE PRICE is RIGHT” for the Pachinko-type bonus game disclosed
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