Appeal No. 98-0964
Application 08/557,436
person that such hatches
were in fact part of appellant’s invention at the time of
filing of the ‘506 design application. See, e.g., In re
Barker, 559 F.2d 588, 591, 194 USPQ 470, 472 (CCPA 1977),
cert. denied, 434 U.S. 1064 (1978) and also Lockwood v.
American Airlines Inc., 107, F.3d 1565, 1571-1572, 41 USPQ2d
1961, 1966 (Fed Cir. 1997), wherein the Court indicated that
“Entitlement to a filing date does not extend to subject
matter which is not disclosed, but would be obvious
over what is expressly disclosed” and that
"It is not sufficient for purposes of the written
description requirement of § 112 that the disclosure,
when combined with the knowledge in the art, would
lead one to speculate as to modifications that the
inventor might have envisioned, but failed to
disclose."
In light of the foregoing, we are convinced that the
disclosure or “written description” of the ‘506 design
application is insufficient to satisfy the written description
requirement of § 112, first paragraph, with regard to the
invention as now claimed in claims 23 through 34 of the
present utility application, and accordingly that the present
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