Appeal No. 95-2124
Application 08/076,789
restriction to Bishop’s expanding airbag negates any proper
inherency argument based on Bishop.
The examiner has rejected dependent claim 3 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as unpatentable over Bishop in view of Miller. Miller
discloses an airbag occupant restraint system wherein the bag is
maintained in a folded position by a band of steel. The band of
steel is generally in an hourglass shape so that the airbag is
allowed to expand laterally at the 3 and 9 o’clock peripheral
positions before the central portion of the airbag is allowed to
expand. Here again, as in Bishop, there is no disclosure of the
steel band plastically deforming and meeting the three stages of
appellants’ claimed airbag expansion as recited in parent claim
5. The disclosure in Miller is that the steel band ruptures at
its juncture 86 when the pressure in the bag reaches a predeter-
mined limit such as 25 psi. Therefore, the disclosure of Bishop
does not make up for the shortcomings of the disclosure in Miller
in that neither reference discloses the plastic deformation
required by appellants’ claim 5. Therefore, the references
Miller and Bishop and the combined teachings thereof do not
establish a prima facie case with respect to the subject matter
of either claim 5 or claim 3.
5
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