Appeal No. 97-1871
Application 08/325,847
A skilled artisan would realize that it is inherent that needles will be deburred or blunted
or radiused when tumbled in a container with an abradant. The abradant does not
discriminate between parts of the object being tumbled and any sharp edges on the
needles will be blunted or "radiused".
We consider the examiner's position to be reasonable, for even if the needles are stacked in aligned
relationship, as appellant asserts, the abradant would still contact their tips. Moreover, such radiusing
would not prevent their use for knitting as appellant implies. Appellant has not met his burden of
showing that a radius would not inherently be formed on the tips of Baylin's needles. See In re
Schreiber, 128 F.3d 1473, 1478, 44 USPQ2d 1429, 1432 (Fed. Cir. 1997).
We will therefore sustain the rejection under § 103 of claim 1, and of claims 3, 8 to 12, 16 to
18, 20, 21, 31 and 32 grouped therewith.
Appellant's Group 2 contains only claim 2, which depends on claim 1 and recites that the
needle is curved. We will not sustain this rejection, because even though Smith discloses a curved
surgical needle, we find nothing in Smith which would suggest curving the knitting needles disclosed by
Baylin, which are used for an entirely different purpose. We likewise will not sustain the rejections of
claims 22 to 30 (appellant's Groups 4 and 5), all of which call for curved needles.
Finally, the claims in appellant's Group 3, Claims 4 to 7 and 13 to 15, all are dependent on
claim 4 and therefore include the recitations of claim 4 that "the second medium comprises particles
having a hardness greater than that of the needles [sic: needle] and having no surface feature with a
radius less than the diameter of the needle." We find no disclosure in any of the applied references,
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