Appeal No. 2004-0912
Application No. 09/942,061
OPINION
We have carefully reviewed the claims, specification and applied prior art,
including all of the arguments advanced by both the Examiner and Appellant in
support of their respective positions. We will affirm the rejection of claims 21 to 25,
40, 41 and 57 to 59 under the judicially created doctrine of obviousness-type double
patenting as being unpatentable over claims 3, 4, 27, 34-37 of U.S. Patent No.
6,282,992. However, we reverse the remaining rejections. Our reasons for this
determination follow.
Rather than reiterate the respective positions advanced by the Examiner and
Appellants, we refer to the Examiner's Answer and to Appellant’s Brief for a complete
exposition thereof.
Rejections under § 103
All of the Examiner’s § 103 rejections rely on, either totally or in-part, Kilness
and Tuttle. Therefore, we will limit our discussion to Kilness and Tuttle and claim 21
which is the sole independent claim.
According to the Examiner, Kilness describes all of the limitations of claim 21
except for the location of the elastic member in the first receptacle. (Answer, pp. 3-4).
The Examiner further asserts “[d]ifferent embodiments of actuating member, in which
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