Appeal No. 1999-1498
Application 08/547,604
commonly used and well known means of retaining bearings in a
guide member where bearings are present” (page 4). Then, in
the answer the examiner goes further and states that Deneke’s
drawings “show detents in which the bearings are guided” (page
4; emphasis added).
The definition of “detent” is “a catch or lever in a
mechanism which initiates or locks movement of a part”; thus,4
in
appellants’ disclosed apparatus, element 65 is a detent
because it locks the module 33 in place on plate 35 (page 11,
lines 7 to 14). Contrary to the examiner’s statement, supra,
we are not aware of the use of a “detent” to hold ball
bearings in place, nor has the examiner provided any evidence
thereof. Deneke does not expressly disclose a detent per se,
but the examiner seemingly has construed the C-shaped
structure holding the balls around bar 19 in Fig. 4 of Deneke
as a “detent”. In our view, this structure is not a detent,
but rather appears to be a cage, as is normally used for
holding ball bearings. Consequently, we do not consider that
4McGraw-Hill Dictionary of Scientific and Technical Terms (2d Ed., 1978).
5
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