Appeal No. 2006-0770 Page 2
Application No. 09/783,366
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a sports commemorator for storing a sports-related
object. A copy of the claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the appellants’ brief.
The examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Rand 405,678 Jun. 18, 1889
Feher 861,822 Jul. 30, 1907
Wilson 5,813,546 Sep. 29, 1998
The following rejection is before us for review.
Claims 1, 5-9, 13, 17, 21-24, 28, 32 and 37-45 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Wilson in view of Feher and Rand.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and the
appellants regarding this appeal, we make reference to the examiner's final rejection (mailed
October 24, 2003), first answer (mailed July 16, 2004) and substitute answer (mailed August 23,
2005) for the examiner's complete reasoning in support of the rejection and to the appellants’
brief (filed April 26, 2004), first reply brief (filed September 17, 2004) and second reply brief
(filed October 21, 2005) for the appellants’ arguments thereagainst.
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellants’ specification and claims, to the applied prior art, and to the respective positions
articulated by the appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
following determinations.
Although relying on the same evidence and statutory basis as in the final rejection, the
examiner modified the explanation of the rejection slightly in the answer and then characterized
the rejection as a new ground of rejection on page 6 of the first answer. Specifically, the
examiner identified a second difference between Wilson and the appellants’ claimed invention,
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