Appeal No. 2006-0948
Application No. 10/354,756
exposed, the end turn may puncture through the
outer mattress sheet construction. (Answer,
paragraph bridging pages 4 and 5).
The examiner also generally cites In re McLaughlin,
443 F.2d 1392, 170 USPQ 209 (CCPA 1971) and In re Keller,
642 F.2d 413, 208 USPQ 871 (CCPA 1981), without further
explanation (Answer, page 5).
Appellant reiterates his argument in the reply brief
by stating:
It is submitted that the Examiner's
determination that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
folding step of the mattress construction of
Withoff with the spring assembly method of
Mossbeck by folding the material around end turns
of springs as taught by Withoff was not only
unobvious to persons skilled in the art at the
time of the invention of this application
(because the two were concerned with different
problems), but was physically impossible. The end
turns of the coil springs of Mossbeck are
enclosed within a pocket of fabric material and
consequently, the end turns are not available or
exposed so as to enable those end turns to be
wrapped or enclosed by material folded around
those end turns. It is therefore submitted that
this combination of art was clearly unobvious and
that the rejection should be withdrawn because
these claims all include the steps of feeding a
spring assembly between a pair of guide rollers,
unrolling a web of insulator material from a roll
of insulator material, passing said web of
insulator material around one of said guide
rollers, and folding said outer edges of said web
of insulator material around end turns of springs
of said spring assembly and securing said web of
insulator material to itself to secure said web
of insulator material to said spring assembly.
Clearly, these steps are not anticipated or
obvious from the disclosure of the Mossbeck and
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