Appeal No. 2005-1815
Application No. 10/057,719
Crocker discloses golf hole liner which, depending on its
construction, may or may not extend into a golf hole cup. The
liner is a cylindrically formed sheet of fibrous material which,
according to the examiner, does not respond to the one-piece,
seamless cylinder limitations in parent claims 1 and 22 or the
unbroken cylindrical sleeve limitation in parent claim 25. In
short, the examiner’s reliance on Browne to overcome these
deficiencies is unsound, essentially for the reasons expressed
above with respect to the proposed combination of Boyd and
Browne.
Thus, we shall not sustain the standing 35 U.S.C. § 103(a)
rejection of claims 8, 24 and 28 as being unpatentable over
Crocker in view of Browne.
IV. Remand to the examiner
As indicated above, independent claim 25 differs from
independent claims 1, 20, 22 and 29 in that it defines the golf
cup sleeve as being an unbroken cylindrical sleeve instead of a
one-piece, seamless cylinder. Notwithstanding the examiner’s
apparent finding to the contrary, the golf hole liner disclosed
by Crocker appears to meet the unbroken cylindrical sleeve
limitation in claim 25 as well as all of the other limitations in
this claim and dependent claim 27. On remand, the examiner
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