Appeal No. 95-4269
Application 08/123,700
Muller is pneumatic, containing an inflatable tube, while the
Miller bumper is mounted to the vehicle frame with hydraulic
shock absorbers. The examiner takes the position that in view of
these references it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to use in place of Katsanis’ energy absorbing
corrugated sheets 5, 6 either a gas-filled resilient deformable
material (claim 14) or hydraulic shock absorbers (claim 15).
We will not sustain these rejections. Although Katsanis
discloses that sheets 5, 6 act as “an excellent shock absorber”
and the Muller and Miller bumpers certainly absorb shock, there
is a difference between the impact of a blast and the impact of a
solid object. As Katsanis states, sheets 5, 6 provide a “large
flexing surface area” to spread the blast and dissipate blast
forces, as well as having apertures out of alignment with each
other and the other elements so that “the moving pressure wave is
forced to change direction thereby redirecting some of the force
of the blast” (column 3, lines 48 to 51). If Katsanis were
modified as proposed by the examiner, the complexity of the
structure would be increased, while at the same time the above-
noted advantages of using sheets 5 and 6 would be lost. We
therefore do not consider that one of ordinary skill in the art
would have been motivated by the disclosures of Muller or Miller
to modify the Katsanis device. Accordingly, the structure
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Last modified: November 3, 2007