Appeal No. 2007-0739
Application No. 11/043,655
over Sawka, and claims 11, 15, and 16 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) as being obvious over Pitts and Porter.3 We affirm.
DISCUSSION
1. Rejections over Pitts
Claims 1-3, 5, 8-10, 12, and 13 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C.
§ 102(b) as being anticipated by Pitts.
Appellant groups claims 2, 3, 5, 8-10, 12, and 13 with claim 1 (Br.
5).4 We thus focus our analysis on claim 1.
In view of its brevity, the rejection is set forth below.
Pitts discloses a chairmat consisting of clear plastic
material having a bottom layer (substrate) comprising a printed
design (column 1, lines 32-49) where the chairmat includes a
transparent top layer (11), intermediate layer (15) and base
layer (16) (column 2, lines 48-55 and Figure 2). Pitts further
discloses the base layer comprises polymeric material (column
2, lines 62-67) and the intermediate layer consists of a
decorative printed design of ink (column 3, lines 1-5). The
reference discloses the bottom layer is transparent (column 3,
lines 43-45) where the underlayer is imprinted with a decorative
pattern (column 3, lines 50-56).
Answer 3-4.
3 Porter, U.S. Patent No. 3,616,118, issued October 26, 1971.
4 The Brief refers to claims 1-3, 5, 8-10, and 12-14 (Br. 5). But as the
Action mailed January 27, 2006, stated that claims 1-3, 5, 8-10, 12, and 13
stood rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by Pitts, id.
at 2, we will treat the rejection as applying to those claims. In addition,
Appellant argues claim 14 separately (Br. 5), but as claim 14 is not included
in the rejection, we need not address Appellant’s arguments as to that claim.
3
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