Appeal No. 2002-1250 Page 12
Application No. 09/200,057
The sole argument presented by the appellant (supplemental brief, pp. 18-19)
against this rejection is that there is no disclosure, motivation, suggestion or teaching in
the applied art to use Ashinoff's forehead guard to head a soccer ball. We do not
agree. In our view, the combined teachings of Ashinoff and Romero do provide the
necessary disclosure, motivation, suggestion and/or teaching to a person of ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made to have used Ashinoff's forehead
guard to head a soccer ball.
Ashinoff's invention relates to a protective guard worn on a user's forehead,
particularly to prevent reinjury to a previously sustained forehead trauma. The forehead
guard consists of a closed loop of a terrycloth or similar stretch material tube and an
unattached semi-circular plastic shock-absorbing member within the tube adapted to
assume a forehead position on the user while the terrycloth tube is stretched about the
back of the user's head to complete the positioning thereof. Ashinoff teaches (column
2, lines 13-21) that
most active people, particularly those in sports, invariably experience a painful
cut, bruise, bump, laceration, contusion, have surgery or a skin eruption in a
specific area of the forehead 12, herein designated 14. At some point during
convalescense, the person will wish to resume a high level of activity, but fears
reinjury to the recovering forehead location 14. Guard 10 is designed primarily to
protect the tender area 14 from reinjury.
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