Appeal No. 2005-1331 4
Application No. 10/215,414
In rejecting claims 1, 2, 6, 7, 9 through 12, 14, 16, 17, 19, 21, 22 and 24 under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Yoshio in view of Balboni, the examiner has
found that Yoshio discloses a warming blanket comprising a fabric (1), first and second
heating elements (2 and 4, respectively), and a single controller (5) for cycling power
individually and alternatively between the heating elements with a fixed duty cycle ratio.
In the examiner’s view, the claimed warming fabric differs from the warming blanket of
Yoshio by calling for first and second non-overlapping zones to be adjacent the lower
and upper portions of the user respectively, and providing more power to the first
heating element compared to the second heating element. To account for these
differences, the examiner points to Balboni and makes the determination that,
Providing selectively-activated heaters with different power ratings in a
flexible heating pad is conventional and well known in the art as evidenced
by Balboni (US4162393) noting heaters 14, 20, and 24 that heat
respective zones and activated selectively. The zones correspond to the
head, torso, and feet. See Fig. 5. Heater 14 is 30W and heaters 20 and
24 are 60W respectively. See col. 1, line 62 - col. 2, line 3. Such an
arrangement ensures that different heating intensities are applied to
different parts of the body, thus reducing the heating intensity for those
parts of the body that do not cool as fast as others (e.g., the head). In
view of Balboni (US4162393), it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to (1) provide longitudinally separate heating zones,
and (2) provide different heating powers corresponding to those zones in
JP6-132069 so that different parts of the body were heated differently to
compensate for the diverse cooling rates along the body (answer, page 4).
For the reasons adequately set forth by appellants in their brief (pages 6-11) and
reply brief, we find that the examiner’s proposed modification of the particular form of
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