Appeal No. 96-4097
Application 08/138,634
The examiner's position with regard to this rejection is,
in essence, that it would have been obvious to modify the
Wilson
apparatus to use a fastener as disclosed by Lalanne instead of
Wilson's conventional fastener (screw) 20.
Appellants argue that Lalanne is not relevant, i.e.,
nonanalogous, prior art. It is unnecessary to resolve this
question, however, for even if Lalanne is assumed to be
analogous art, we do not consider that the claimed subject
matter would have been obvious over the combination of Wilson
and Lalanne.
If the fastener disclosed by Lalanne were substituted for
the connector 20 of Wilson by one of ordinary skill in the
art, the resulting structure would not, in our view, meet the
limitations of the appealed claims. Looking first at the
device disclosed by Wilson, the apertured members 16, 26, do
not physically coact with the screw 20 to prevent it from
being rotated, but simply block access to the screw head, so
that the screw cannot be removed. Thus element 16 is fixed to
the device (object) 14 by the screw 20, and element 26 is a
3
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