Appeal No. 2002-1037
Application 08/963,131
[t]he ordinarily skilled artisan in the golf club
head art, as is commonly known, experiments with all
variety of known materials to construct durable high
performing golf club heads. As is also well known, and
indicated by Anderson’s disclosure, the use of light-
weight, high-strength metals such as aluminum and
titanium are considered advantageous materials for
forming golf club heads. Thus, when Anderson’s
disclosure indicates that a variety of suitable
materials of this class would be suitable to form his
club head, it cannot be said to have been unobvious for
one [of] ordinary skill in the art to have used a
material such as Peker’s which is of the class of
light-weight, high strength materials suitable for
Anderson’s purpose [answer, page 4].
There is nothing in the fair teachings of Anderson and
Peker, however, which would have suggested the use of amorphous
metals to make a metal golf club head. The examiner’s attempt to
bridge this gap by categorizing Peker’s amorphous metals in the
same class as the golf club head metals (stainless steel,
aluminum, beryllium copper and titanium) described by Anderson
lacks evidentiary support, and ostensibly stems from an
impermissible hindsight analysis of the obviousness issue at
hand. This flaw in the examiner’s position is illustrated by the
resort to the purported common knowledge that the artisan
“experiments” with all variety of known materials to construct
durable high performing golf club heads. Such amounts to an
“obvious to try” test which is not the proper standard under
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007