Appeal No. 97-3707
Application 08/595,910
b) claims 10 and 11 as being unpatentable over Fox in
view of Delsack, and further in view of Tegethoff; and
c) claim 12 as being unpatentable over Fox in view of
Delsack and Tegethoff, and further in view of Schultz.
Reference is made to the appellants’ brief (Paper No. 12)
and to the examiner’s answer (Paper No. 13) for the respective
positions of the appellants and the examiner with regard to
the merits of these rejections.
Fox, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses a hand-
held device for gripping and rotating objects such as bottle
caps, jar lids, door knobs, and the like. The Abstract of the
reference is illustrative:
[a] device 2 for gripping differently sized objects
4 that require rotating by hand, which device 2
comprises a length of flexible material which in use
is formed into a part circle 8 of a diameter
appropriate to a chosen object to be gripped, and a
handle portion 10. The flexible material may be of
rubber or plastic and sufficiently inelastic that it
will not noticeably stretch during rotation. The
device may have a member 16 for receiving a person’s
thumb during use of the device, the member 16 having
a body part (18, fig 4) and a pair of straps (20,
fig 4) which permit the body part to slide. The
device may be joined at the handle end by means of
bonding material (fig 3), retractable press studs
3
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