Appeal No. 1998-3312
Application No. 08/354,803
claim 1 on appeal would not have been suggested to one of
ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made.
In that regard, as pointed out by the appellant (Brief, pp. 5-
6) there is no suggestion, motivation, or teaching in the
prior art whereby a person of ordinary skill would have
included the flexible bearing means of Gruska in the casing
and tubular element of Holloway that extends beyond the lower
end of the outer sleeve absent the use of impermissible
hindsight. Further, we agree with the appellant (Reply Brief,
pp 2) that the incorporation of the slits taught by Gruska to
form flexible tongues in the skirt (34) of Holloway would
disrupt the smooth frictional operation between the flexible
tab (76) and the smooth inner wall (44) of the base (34)
taught by Holloway, thereby teaching away from the proposed
combination.
Since all the limitations of claim 1 are not obvious
over the applied prior art, we shall not sustain the rejection
of independent claim 1 and claims 2-8, 11, 17, 18, 25-29 and
32 which depend therefrom under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
11
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