Appeal 2006-3366
Application 10/864,041
Appellant’s arguments are not persuasive, and we will sustain the rejection
of dependent claims 2 and 3.
With respect to dependent claim 5, Appellant argues the Examiner has
not shown a teaching addressing dependent claim 5. Appellant further argues
that the Examiner’s statement in the Answer is an eleventh hour attempt to
take Official Notice and should not be considered (Reply Br. 23-24). We
agree that the discussion is late in prosecution, but so is Appellant’s
assertion of the elimination of the first order harmonics in the cogging
torque profile which is unsupported by the express language of dependent
claim 5 which merely recites “skewed by an amount ranging up to about one
half the distance . . . .” We agree with the Examiner that Hendershot
discloses skewing the magnets which we find to fairly suggest some skew.
Thus, we find Hendershot fairly suggests the invention as recited in
dependent claim 5. Therefore, Appellant’s arguments are not persuasive.
With respect to dependent claim 6, Appellant argues that the language
of the claim requires at least four rotor layers yet the language of dependent
claim 6 does not explicitly recite four rotor layers. To support this
requirement of four rotor layers, Appellant further argues that dependent
claim 6 correlates to Fig. 14 of the Specification which shows four rotor
layers and the Examiner has not shown the four layers in the prior art.
Additionally, Appellant identifies in the arguments that there is an
inconsistency between the language of independent claim 1 which recites “at
least one rotor assembly” and the required two rotor assemblies as disclosed
in Fig. 14 which is relied upon for support (Reply Br. 24-27). Since Figure
14 requires two rotors and independent claim 1 requires only a single rotor,
we find Appellant’s reliance thereon for support of the argued four rotor
16
Page: Previous 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013