Appeal No. 2006-1956
Application No. 09/935,917
1 Having concluded that it would have been obvious to combine the
2 references as proposed in the Examiner’s first theory of unpatentability, we
3 now address the issue of whether the combination results in the subject
4 matter of Appellant’s claims, in particular, a method or perforator for
5 selecting sheets of a group for perforation as the group is successively
6 moving through a perforation device. The Moll perforation apparatus, as
7 modified to provide bar codes or other discriminating signals on the sheets
8 and readers to read the instructions in the codes to control the perforator
9 unit, selects sheets of a group or batch for perforation, based on the
10 information in the codes printed on each sheet, as the group or batch of
11 sheets is successively moving through Moll’s perforation apparatus. We
12 thus conclude that the references, when combined in accordance with the
13 Examiner’s first theory of unpatentability, results in the subject matter of
14 Appellant’s independent claims 1, 11, 14, and 27 and, in particular, the
15 selecting feature alleged by Appellant to be lacking.1 Therefore, the
16 Examiner’s rejection of independent claims 1, 11, 14, and 27, as well as
17 dependent claims 2, 15, 17, 22, 23, 28, 30, and 35-38 which Appellant has
18 not separately argued, is sustained.
19
20
1 It is therefore unnecessary for us to address the Examiner’s second theory
of unpatentability.
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