Appeal No. 96-0776
Application 07/953,539
proposed by the examiner would necessitate a total redesign of
the Booth invention, for which suggestion can be found only via
impermissible hindsight. Again, the failure of the references to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness necessitates that the
rejection not be sustained.
As for the rejection of claims 7, 13 and 15 through 17, the
addition of Domnikov to the combination of Booth and Bellis for
the purpose of disclosing the use of aluminum in seals fails to
overcome the basic problem which again is noted immediately
above. There is no prima facie case of obviousness, and the
rejection is not sustained.
Finally, claims 6, 8 and 9 stand rejected as being
unpatentable over Booth in view of Bellis and Smith. These
claims depend from claim 1, and therefore contain its
limitations. This being the case, the problem pointed out above
regarding the lack of suggestion to combine in the manner
proposed by the examiner also
is applicable here. It is not cured by Smith, which is cited
only for its teaching of utilizing knurling to promote electrical
conduction in a sealing means. The lack of a prima facie case of
obviousness causes us not to sustain this rejection.
11
Page: Previous 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007