Appeal 2007-1548
Application 10/702,346
Pepperling’s device to operate for its intended purpose, we find the Appellants’
argument unpersuasive.
Claim 1 is a combination which only unites old elements with no change in
their respective functions and which yields predictable results. Thus, the claimed
subject matter likely would have been obvious under KSR. In addition, neither
Appellants’ Specification nor Appellants’ arguments present any evidence that the
addition of a knurled press-fit arrangement to a pressure port is uniquely
challenging or difficult for one of ordinary skill in the art. Moreover, the knurled
press-fit of Ito is a technique that has been used to improve one device (the rotor
and shaft jointing structure of Ito), and one of skill in the art would recognize that
it would improve similar devices in the same manner.
Because Appellants have not shown that the application of the Ito knurled
press-fit arrangement to form a jointing structure between the pressure port and
housing of Pepperling would have been beyond the skill of one of skill in the art,
we find using the technique would have been obvious. As such, the Examiner did
not err in holding that it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in
the art at the time the invention was made to modify the pressure sensor assembly
of Pepperling to add the knurled press-fit arrangement of Ito to provide a better
press-fit connection and thereby obtain a firm jointing (Answer 4). Claims 2-12
were not argued separately, and fall with claim 1. See 37 C.F.R. § 41.37(c)(1)(vii)
(2006).
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