Appeal No. 2006-0516
Application No. 10/344,013
We reverse the aforementioned rejections. We need to address
only claim 1, which is the sole independent claim.1
The appellants’ claim 1 requires an automatically varied cycle
amount of irrigation water, and requires that the cycle amount on
watering days falls within user controllable maximum and non-zero
minimum thresholds, wherein the user sets both the maximum and
minimum thresholds as a duration of time.
Nielsen discloses:
Controller timing control of the irrigation valves
is from 1 minute to 240 minutes in one minute increments.
Thus one minute precision in starting or stopping
irrigation is combined with the ability to set watering
durations of up to 4 hours for each start time. [col. 9,
lines 33-37]
* * *
The AUTOSPLIT Set Up will meet the user’s needs for
most watering situations. The user can use this setup to
program multiple watering cycles by automatically
splitting the total (100%) watering duration (1 minute to
1 The examiner does not rely upon Oliver for any disclosure that remedies the deficiency in
Nielsen as to the independent claim.
3
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