Appeal No. 2006-1062
Application No. 10/246,994
the examiner’s reasoned analysis and application of the prior
art, as well as her cogent and thorough disposition of the
arguments raised by appellant. Accordingly, we will adopt the
examiner’s reasoning as our own in sustaining the rejections of
record, and we add the following for emphasis only.
There is no dispute that Thompson discloses what appellant
admits to be known in the present specification, namely, a hand
held paint shield of the type claimed without the plurality of
paint impervious cover elements on the working surface. However,
we fully concur with the examiner that Holt evidences the
obviousness of employing such a plurality of cover elements on
any surface that is to be protected or masked during a painting
operation, whether it be the wall of a building, as disclosed by
Holt, or the working surface of Thompson’s paint shield. We find
Thompson and Holt to be analogous art since both are directed to
the problem of shielding areas that are not to be painted. As
noted above, appellant’s specification acknowledges that the
problem of paint accumulating on the working surface of the paint
shield was known in the art, and we have no doubt that the
solution of this problem would have been readily apparent to one
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