Ex parte ERDMAN et al. - Page 7




          Appeal No. 1997-0397                                                        
          Application 07/863,900                                                      

          motor art at the time the invention was made would have known that          
          increasing the current to the stationary armature (coils) of a              
          brushless DC motor would increase the torque and, hence, the power          
          output at a given speed.  See Fink et al., Standard Handbook for            
          Electrical Engineers 20-8 (13th ed., McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1993) (copy         
          attached) ("Speed of a dc motor is controlled either by varying the         
          voltage across the armature, the field winding, or both. . . .              
          Torque produced by a brushless dc motor is directly proportional to         
          armature current.").2                                                       
               Based on the evidence of record, we find that the brushless DC         
          motors of Sato and Gerfast inherently have "said motor hardware being       
          operable within a range of power outputs with said range being              
          determinable by the capacitance of the capacitor when such                  
          capacitance is within a predetermined range."                               
               The second issue is whether the "whereby" clause, "whereby the         
          power output of a given hardware assembly may be preselectively             
          determined, at the time of manufacture and interconnection with the         
          control circuit by the capacitance value of said capacitor in the           


          2  Although the date of this standard reference work is after               
          the filing date of the application, it is assumed that these                
          teachings would have been known to those skilled in the art more than       
          one year before the filing date.                                            
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