Appeal No. 1998-2482
Application No. 08/533,429
With regard to independent claim 9, the top of Hadley’s flexible gasket, shown as
element 33 in Figure 3B, is “a main body member” of the gasket system, as claimed.
Claims 2, 6, 7, 10, 14, 15, 17 and 19 will fall with independent claims 1 and 9 since
appellant does not argue the merits of these claims separately.
Finally, we turn to the rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We will not sustain these
rejections.
With regard to claims 3-5, 11-13, 18 and 20-22, the examiner relies on Cantrell for
a teaching of a threaded receptacle having a threaded fastener and a boss. Without even
reaching a decision on whether Cantrell, in fact, discloses a limiting means and a boss, as
claimed, we will not sustain the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 because we find nothing
that would have led the artisan to combine Hadley and Cantrell. The examiner has
provided no convincing line of reasoning as to why the skilled artisan would have applied
the flexible gasket of Hadley in the device of Cantrell, in place of gasket 144 taught by
Cantrell. Moreover, if the gasket of Hadley were to be applied in place of gasket 144 of
Cantrell, it is unclear how such a gasket would be placed to ensure that the leg members of
the gasket would deflect away from each other when the opposing substrates in Cantrell
are drawn together. It may be that in conforming to the shape of the peripheral walls 134
and interior walls [Cantrell-
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