Appeal No. 1999-1168 Page 4
Application No. 08/876,191
not disclose or teach a mechanism for locking the handle in the bore, much less the sliding
sleeve, control bar, and transverse stem that are described at some length in the claim.
With regard to this, the examiner takes the position on page 3 of the Answer that
[a]ny of the Nickipuck patents suggest the use of a sliding sleeve to lock a
detent means in position. It would therefore be obvious to one skilled in the
art at the time the invention was made to modify Sharp et. al. by using this
well known type of locking means because all the Nickipuck patents suggest
this type of detent locking means in handles and extensions.
The appellant has argued in the Brief that the conclusion reached by the examiner is not
correct. We agree, recognizing that the examiner has in the rejection combined each of
the Nickipuck patents with Sharp as alternatives, and that no single one of them discloses
or teaches all of the structural limitations of the locking mechanism that are recited in claim
19.
Among the requirements of the locking mechanism as recited in claim 19 is that
there be a spring biased detent means in the front of the handle to lock the handle to the
bore in the ratchet head, and that this comprise a spring biased singular stem transversely
arranged within a transverse bore, with the stem head “always being urged into and
remaining always in contact with said control bar by the bias of said spring.” The
appellant points out in the Brief (page 10) that a purpose of this arrangement is to keep the
stem from migrating out of the bore when the locking bar is in the unlocked position.
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