Appeal No. 95-2623
Application 08/084,623
Kazama and Kahn teach everything in claim 22 except for the
diameter of the spring being less than 0.01 inches. The
examiner asserts that absent criticality, the dimensions of a
spring are an obvious design choice [answer, page 3].
Therefore, the examiner concludes that the spring of claim 22
would have been obvious to the artisan in view of the applied
references.
Appellant argues that it would not have been obvious
to substitute the Kahn tubular spring for the helical wire
spring of Kazama because the patents are from non-analogous
arts, and the Kazama patent does not discuss the problems in
the probe art which could be solved by a tubular spring
[brief, page 4]. Our first observation is that claim 22
simply recites a spring, and has nothing to do with the probe
art or the problems associated with the probe art. Thus,
appellant’s arguments are not commensurate in scope with the
claimed invention. For a claim having the breadth of claim
22, we are of the view that any teaching of a spring is in an
analogous art to the claimed invention.
Appellant argues that the helical spring of Kahn is
molded and not cut as required by the claims [brief, page 6].
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