Appeal 2006-3398
Application 10/132,199
corner separation device 21 separates the corners of the sheets of the collation, an
auger collation deflection mechanism 20 biases the leading edge of the entire
collation downward toward gripper drum 25 (Belec, col. 3, ll. 41-57). While
Belec’s auger collation deflection mechanism 20 may restrain the remaining sheets
in the sheet supply stack 12 while it simultaneously biases the collation downward,
Belec does not teach or suggest restraining from singling and then releasing for
singling each separator and at least the associated group of sheet material. Rather,
because Belec is concerned with processing the collations as quickly as possible,
Belec teaches handling sheets as a collation instead of handling each sheet singly
(Belec, col. 1, ll. 50-58).
Both prior art references are concerned with moving sheets of paper through
paper handling machines. Belec would provide motivation for one skilled in the
art at the time of the invention to modify Parkander to handle the sheets from
buffer supply 11 as a collation, rather than handling them singly as disclosed in
Parkander. Specifically, the modified Parkander apparatus would separate and
deflect the corner of each sheet’s lead edge downward as each sheet is counted and
then an auger collation deflection mechanism 20 would bias the leading edge of the
entire collation downward toward the removal means 13, so that the stack is
processed as a collation. Thus, even when the teachings of Belec and Parkander
are combined, we do not find any motivation from the combined teachings to
modify Parkander to restrain from singling and then release for singling each
separator and at least the associated group of sheet material or to modify Parkander
to add a restraining unit arranged to restrain from singling each separator and its
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