Appeal No. 2006-1772
Application No. 09/993,359
stage of play unless said free advance feature has been allocated, in which event the game
continues to the next stage of play.” Claim 114 recites similar limitations. Falciglia
teaches a video bingo game wherein the user is given a number of spins per game to win.
One of the characters the user can get is a “free spin” see figure 1, item 7e. If the user
gets a free spin character they get to spin again up to a maximum number of spins. See
column 5, lines 12 through 19 and column 6, lines 8 through 14. Though, as discussed
supra, we find that both the game of “twenty six” and traditional Bunco, teach the game
as recited in claim 109, we do not find that one skilled in the art would have been
motivated to incorporate the free spin feature of Falciglia into either of these games to
produce the game as claimed in claims 113 and 114. In the game of “twenty six” the user
rolls 13 times and then the game ends, the game does not end when no match is made (as
claimed in claims 113 and 114), thus incorporating the free spin of Falciglia into the
game of “twenty six” would only result in extra rolls of the dice, not extra rolls of the
dice if no match is made as is claimed. Similarly, in the game of Bunco the game does
not end if no match is made, rather the roll of the dice is passed to the next player. Thus,
we do not find that the combination of Matsumoto, Edgeworth, Bunco rules and Falciglia
teach or suggest all of the limitations of claims 113 and 114. Accordingly, we will not
sustain the examiner’s rejection of claims 113 and 114 under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
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