Appeal No. 96-0640
Application 08/127,178
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 of an examiner’s
rejection of Claims 1-10, all the claims pending in this
application.
Introduction
Claims 1-10 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable in view of the teaching of Metzger, U.S.
4,079,162, patented March 14, 1978, combined with applicant’s
purported admission that “it is commonly known to add mass to
the ceramic discs to reduce their resonant frequencies at
pages 1-2 of the instant specification under their description
of the prior art” (Examiner’s Answer (Ans.), p. 3). Claims 12
and 8 are representative of the claimed subject matter and
read:
The examiner appears to be relying on the following2
statement at page 2 of the specification:
One known method of acoustic matching is mass-loading the
bimorphs whose resonant frequency is too high, i.e., the
process of adding mass to an object to dampen the resonant
frequency thereof. Conventional mass-loading techniques
comprise affixing pre-fabricated damping elements, such as
tiles or weights, to an object to add mass to the object,
however, the ceramic transducer discs pose a special problem
in that ceramic discs are mounted in very close proximity,
and the conventional damping elements do not fit within the
predetermined size constraints of the mounting fixture.
- 2 -
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007