Appeal No. 98-0353
Application 08/561,463
the blade is disclosed as being made of "rubber or a suitable
rubber compound", we do not believe that one of ordinary skill
would consider sponge rubber to be "suitable", because the
Clift utensil would then be unable to be used for its
disclosed purpose, i.e., scraping. Shumway does not provide
any suggestion or motivation to substitute sponge rubber,
because according to Shumway, the sponge provides "sponge
contact cleansing action", not scraping, and the teeth 26 do
not scrape, but rather collapse into the grooves 20 when the
handle is rotated (col. 3, lines 6 to 9). In order for the
Clift utensil to be usable for scraping, the rubber of which
it is made, while flexible, would have be stiff enough to
perform that function, and not a soft material like sponge
rubber. One of ordinary skill would not modify the Clift
utensil to make it unsuitable for its intended purpose. Cf.
Ex parte Rosenfeld, 130 USPQ 113, 115 (Bd. Apps. 1961).
The Jacobsen reference does not overcome the deficiencies
in the combination of Clift and Shumway disclosure above,
since it also provides no suggestion or motivation for making
a scraper out of sponge rubber, without which there would be
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