Appeal 2006-3398
Application 10/132,199
THE REJECTIONS
The Examiner relies upon the following as evidence of unpatentability:
Parkander US 5,575,463 Nov. 19, 1996
Kayani US 5,917,930 Jun. 29, 1999
Belec US 6,502,812 B2 Jan. 07, 2003
Claims 1-3, 9, 15-20, and 24-30 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Parkander and Belec.
Claims 4-8, 10-12, and 21-23 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Parkander and Belec and further in view of Kayani.
ISSUE
Appellants contend that the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1 and 17,
because Parkander and Belec together fail to disclose or suggest the step of
“restraining from singling and then releasing for singling each separator and at
least the associated group of sheet material” (claim 1) and fail to disclose or
suggest “a restraining unit located before the singler and arranged to restrain each
separator and at least the following group of sheet material from singling and to
release them for singling” (claim 17) (Br. 12-14). Appellants further contend that
the Examiner erred in rejecting claims 1 and 17 because Parkander and Belec are
not properly combinable (Br. 15-17). The Examiner contends Belec discloses a
mechanical restraining unit (20) and that it would have been obvious to modify
Parkander by utilizing a restraining unit “for the purpose of separating collations of
documents from each other ‘even before the first collation has been removed from
the stack’” (Answer 3-4 and 6-7 (quoting Belec, col. 6, ll. 55-60 and col. 3, ll. 45-
5
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