Appeal No. 97-3298
Application No. 08/349,426
side flaps to hold down the center of a shoe lace before
lacing is commenced.
The appellant has taken issue with only one of the
aspects of the examiner’s rejection of claim 1, and that is
the shape of the marking on the device that represents the
shoelace loop. The claim requires that the marking be “at
least one line extending along a loop that is elongated rather
than circular.” Bonfigli does not explicitly disclose a
marking which illustrates the claimed elongated loop. What
Bonfigli teaches is that the user places a finger on the
numeral “3,” and then loops one lace around it to form one
loop of a “bow” (column 2, lines 28-31). As illustrated in
Figure 4a, the loop thus formed follows the line defining the
circumference of the circle within which the numeral is
located for a major portion of its length, whereupon it
becomes elongated (Figure 4a).
We agree with the examiner that one of ordinary skill in
the art would have found it obvious to additionally mark the
Bonfigli device with an elongated loop to assist the user in
forming the correct loop configuration. We arrive at this
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007