Appeal No. 96-0831
Application 08/191,113
of greater hardness and essentially is encapsulated in the soft
member. When inserted into the hole, a sealing element 34 of the
soft member engages the periphery of the hole, owing in part to
the action of a plurality of spaced load resilient tangs 42 which
extend from the base element of the rigid member (Figure 2). It
is the examiner’s position that Olmstead teaches everything
recited in claim 1 except for not specifying the Shore hardness
of the two components, but that the selection of relative
hardness levels for the two components would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art.
We are not persuaded by the appellant’s arguments that the
claim requires both members to be of plastic material, for while
that feature is disclosed in the specification, it is not recited
in the claims. As for the assertion that the mention of “Shore”
values implies that the materials both are of plastic because
this measure is “never” used for non-plastic materials (Brief,
page 13), we first note that no evidence has been presented in
support of this conclusion . In addition, it is our view that3
since no criticality has been established for this limitation,
3According to its definition, Shore hardness is not limited
to plastic material, i.e. “hardness of metal or other material as
measured by a Shore scleroscope.” Webster’s Third New
International Dictionary, 1971, p. 2102.
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