Appeal No. 97-2462
Application 29/031,592
The full text of the examiner's rejection and response
to the argument advanced by appellant can be found in the answer,
while the complete statement of the argument made by appellant
appears on pages 4 through 8 of the brief.
OPINION
In reaching our conclusion on the obviousness issue
raised in this appeal, we have carefully assessed appellant's
disclosed design, the designs of the applied references, and the
viewpoints of appellant and the examiner as set forth in the
brief and answer, respectively.
As a consequence of our review, this panel of the board
makes the determination that the examiner's rejection is not well
founded. Our reasoning in support of this conclusion follows.
At the outset, we keep in mind that, in a rejection of
a design claim under 35 U.S.C. § 103, there is the requirement
that there must be a reference (the basic design), a something in
existence, the design characteristics of which are basically the
same as the claimed design in order to support a holding of
obviousness. In other words, the basic reference design must
look like the claimed design. See In re Harvey, 12 F.3d 1061,
3
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Last modified: November 3, 2007