Appeal No. 96-2299
Application No. 08/072,753
spindle being resiliently supported to be movable
perpendicular to the tool axis.
The claims stand rejected as being unpatentable over
Dombrowski in view of McKinney or Witt. The examiner finds in
the primary reference all of the claimed structure except that
Dombrowski’s contact surface is a stem-like extension of the
cutter that rotates with the cutter rather than the claimed
“rotatable journal bearing provided at a tip of the cutter.” 3
However, it is the examiner’s position that it would have been
obvious to replace the stem-like extension of Dombrowski with
a rotatable journal bearing in view of the teachings of either
of the two secondary references.
With regard to independent claims 7 and 12, the
appellants have advanced only one argument, which is that it
would not have been obvious to combine the references in the
manner proposed by the examiner. Their reasoning is that
Dombrowski is operating on precision metal parts and requires
the disclosed pilot construction to assure superior strength,
3In view of the description of the invention provided in
the specification, and in keeping with the appellants’
arguments in the Brief, we interpret the quoted phrase to mean
that the outer race of the bearing is rotatable with respect
to the cutter.
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Last modified: November 3, 2007