Appeal No. 2001-1772 Page 5
Application No. 09/059,699
a second blade; and
a third blade,
wherein said base portion of said spacer is positioned between said first
blade and said second blade such that said lower surface is disposed on
said first blade and said upper surface supports said second blade, said
spacer having at least one protrusion member extending above said upper
surface supporting said third blade, said spacer being in a fixed relationship
to said platform member.
The examiner is of the view that all of the subject matter of claim 1 finds correspondence in
the Ferraro razor cartridge which, as shown in Figure 3, comprises three blades that are
held in place by a plurality of support members 80. In order to arrive at this conclusion, the
examiner has taken the position that the appellant’s claims do not require that the platform
member and the spacer be separate elements, and has carved the Ferraro support
members into portions and labeled these portions as the “platform member” and the
“spacer” recited in the claims (see Paper No. 17, page 2). The appellant argues that the
claim should not be interpreted in such a manner, and that Ferraro fails to disclose all of
the subject matter recited in the claim in that it does not have a separate platform member
and support. We agree with the appellant’s conclusion that Ferraro does not anticipate
claim 1. Our reasoning follows.
We first note that Ferraro was cited on page 3 of the appellant’s specification as
an example of the prior art over which the appellant considered his invention to be an
improvement. Ferraro is described as disclosing a plurality of resilient supports each of
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007