Appeal No. 2005-0988
Application 09/878,592
in Pierce. On page 5 of the answer, the examiner sets forth the
following as the “Overall Motivation” for this combination:
Branding is well known in the gaming machine industry.
Branding is an attempt to attract players by associating the
game with some easily recognizable and popular game or
television show. Thus there are slot machines with bonus
games based on MONOPOLY, BATTLESHIP, WHEEL OF FORTUNE, CLUE,
JEOPARDY, and LET’S MAKE A DEAL. All of these games seek to
capitalize on the popularity of well-known games or game
shows in order to attract players. THE PRICE IS RIGHT is an
extremely popular and long-running game show. The Plinko
game is one of the most popular features on the show. It
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art
at the time of the invention to have adapted THE PRICE IS
RIGHT’s Plinko game to be a bonus game in a slot machine in
order to capitalized on the tremendous popularity and name
recognition of THE PRICE IS RIGHT in order to attract
players.
Contrary to appellant’s arguments in the brief and reply
brief, we 1) find ample motivation and suggestion in the applied
prior art references for the combination urged by the examiner,
2) do not believe that the proposed combination significantly
changes the principle of operation of the Pierce reference, and
3) do not believe that the references “teach away” from the
proposed combination. In that regard, we note that the
discussions in the “Background of the Invention” portion of both
Pierce and Mayeroff provide a strong suggestion of using a
popular television game show game, such as, for example, WHEEL OF
FORTUNE or JEOPARDY! as the basis for a bonus game to be played
on an underlying casino gaming machine, such as a slot
10
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007