Appeal 2007-0485
Application 10/457,876
II. DISCUSSION
Indefiniteness
The Examiner rejects claims 28, 30-34, and 43-51 as indefinite under
35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 2 because “a pizza pan” as recited in line 3 of claims 28
and 46 does not have antecedent basis and, therefore, it is unclear whether
the pizza pan is the same pizza pan referenced in line 2 of those claims.
Appellants state that line 3 is referencing the same pizza pan as line 2
and upon successful resolution of the § 103 rejections, Appellants will
amend the claims as suggested by the Examiner by changing “a pizza pan”
to “ the pizza pan” in line 3 of claims 28, 46, and 47 (Br. § VII.A).
In the absence of a dispute between the Examiner and Appellants, we
summarily affirm the decision of the Examiner with respect to the rejection
under 35 U.S.C. § 112, ¶ 2.
Obviousness
Each of the obviousness rejections advanced by the Examiner relies
upon the teachings of Khatchadourian with those of MacManus. Appellants
contend that there is no motivation to combine the teachings of these two
references because the proposed modification of Khatchadourian would
render the device of Khatchadourian unsatisfactory for its intended purpose
and would change the principle of operation of the Khatchadourian
apparatus (Br. 9-11). The issue, therefore, is: Have Appellants successfully
shown that there is no reason, suggestion, or motivation to modify the device
of Khatchadourian as proposed by the Examiner?
Khatchadourian describes an apparatus and method for making pizza.
The apparatus includes a rotary index table station 20 (Khatchadourian, p. 7,
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013