Appeal No. 1998-1844
Application No. 08/601,726
canceled. Claim 42 has apparently been allowed (see Advisory Action mailed December
22, 1997 (Paper No. 7)).
We refer to the Final Rejection (Paper No. 5) and the Examiner's Answer (Paper
No. 11) for a statement of the examiner's position and to the Brief (Paper No. 10) for
appellants’ position with respect to the claims which stand rejected.
OPINION
The examiner offers the references of Balter and Westmoreland as evidence of
obviousness of the claimed subject matter. Appellants contend (Brief, pages 5-6) that
instant claim 1, requiring that each of the rotary motor and the linear motor be disposed
entirely within the same housing, thus distinguishes over the prior art.
We agree with appellants that the references as applied fail to establish prima facie
obviousness of the subject matter of instant claim 1. As appellants point out (Brief, page
5), in Balter a major portion of rotary motor 80 (Fig. 1) is disposed outside housing 12.
About one-half of the driving portion of the linear “motor” is disposed outside housing 12;
that is, inner magnet 66 is located within the housing, while outer magnet 70 is disposed
outside the housing.
We agree with the examiner’s finding that Westmoreland contains a clear
suggestion (column 5, lines 34-44) for coaxial positioning of motors, as shown in Figure 2
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