Appeal No. 2005-1003
Application No. 09/967,249
independently of one another, and that Giobbi teaches that it was
known in the art to employ scatter pay paylines in slot machines
to enhance the perceived payoff of the game (see column 1, lines
64 et seq.). It is appellants' position that "it can not be
obvious to individually select the number of cells to be placed
in play independently of one another when the prior art only
teaches the selection of a predetermined number of cells in a
selected payline or in a randomly selected scattered 'payline'
pattern" (page 4 of principal brief, penultimate paragraph).
Appellant contends that the examiner improperly "equates the
selection of a number of cells in scattered payline to the
individual selection of number of cells independently of one
another when they are completely different" (page 5 of principal
brief, first full sentence). We understand appellants' argument
to be that there is a patentable distinction between the claimed
system, which allows the player to individually select cells in a
scattered pattern, and the well-known system which allows the
player to select a random pattern of cells generated by the
system. While we agree with appellants that there is a
distinction between the two systems, we concur with the examiner
that such a distinction would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art.
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