Appeal No. 95-0575
Application No. 07/921,645
demonstrated by the applied prior art, the differences between
the claimed invention and the applied prior art and the
respective viewpoints advanced by the appellant and the examiner,
we conclude that none of the appealed rejections is well founded.
Independent claim 1 recites an adjustable basketball
backboard support system comprising, inter alia, a backboard, a
support member, a parallelogram linkage system interconnecting
the backboard and the support member, an adjustment means
including an adjustment link, and a counter-weight means for
applying a primary force to the parallelogram linkage system in
opposition to and substantially equal to the force applied to the
parallelogram linkage system by the weight of the backboard. The
examiner concedes that the adjustable basketball backboard system
shown in Exhibit A does not meet the limitation in claim 1
requiring the adjustment link to include the counter-weight means
(see page 2 in the final rejection). In this regard, the
examiner notes that the corresponding counter-weight means in the
Exhibit A system is mounted at the end of an extension of one of
the links in the parallelogram linkage system. Nonetheless, the
examiner concludes that the prior art counter-weight means
“could” be mounted on the adjustment link, and that it would have
been an obvious matter of choice to so mount it, “this being no
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