Appeal No. 95-2623
Application 08/084,623
argument or evidence that the examiner has erred. Appellant
has not presented any evidence or arguments as to why the
examiner’s prima facie case should not be persuasive with
respect to the invention as recited in claim 22.
Appellant argues that it is not obvious to simply make
a spring smaller because “simply making a spring smaller will
not produce a spring having the appropriate characteristics,
e.g. stiffness, for a probe” [brief, page 8]. As we noted
above, however, claim 22 recites nothing about a probe so that
the spring of claim 22 is not required to meet any
“appropriate characteristics.” The only question is whether a
spring of the claimed size would have been obvious to the
artisan, and we agree with the examiner that it would have
been prima facie obvious to make a helical spring of the size
recited in claim 22. In summary, we agree
with the examiner that the invention as broadly recited in
claim 22 would have been obvious to the artisan in view of the
applied references and the prima facie case of obviousness
established by the examiner. Since appellant has not
persuaded us of error in the examiner’s position, we sustain
the rejection of claim 22.
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