Appeal Number: 2006-3176
Application Number: 10/203,620
"Color organs," or mechanisms which modulate colored lights to
sound or music for pleasing effect, have existed in the sphere of
electronic experimentation for more than 30 years. Early examples
include the "Sonalite" (ref: Popular Electronics, "The 'Sonalite'" May
1968), the "Psychedelia 1" (ref: Popular Electronics, "Psychedelia 1"
September 1969), and other light controllers (ref: Popular Electronics,
"Christmas Tree Lights Keep Time to Music" December 1969).
Generally, these devices use discrete electronic devices to vary the
intensity of one or more banks of lights based on the input of some
form of input (usually sound) for pleasing effect.
(Para [0002]).
We note that this clearly teaches both modulating lights with music and
exposing plants, at least Christmas trees, to those lights, which embraces the
entirety of the claimed subject matter in claim 1, except for the use of LED’s. We
note that LED’s have been a species of the genus Christmas Tree Lights as long as
LED’s have been economically practical, which antedates the Rice provisional
application. Therefore, a person of ordinary skill in the art would have
immediately envisaged LED’s as a species of lights among the likely
implementations of Rice’s Christmas Tree Lights. Further, a person of ordinary
skill in the art, upon reading Norifumi would have applied LED’s as the lighting
source, arranged the lights to illuminate the tree as much as practical and place the
tree near other plants as well for the advantages toward plants taught by Norifumi,
and upon reading Statesman, would have provided sufficient volume to the music
driving the Christmas Tree Lights to have an appreciable effect on the growth of
the plants so illuminated.
Accordingly, we reject the two independent claims 1 and 14 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as obvious over Norifumi, Statesmana and Rice. We leave the consideration
of the applicability of these references to the remaining dependent claims to the
examiner.
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007