Appeal No. 96-3961
Application No. 08/295,268
invention in hindsight. Accordingly, we can not sustain the
Examiner's obviousness rejection of independent claim 1. Since
all of the limitations of independent claim 1 are not suggested
by the applied prior art, we can also not sustain the
Examiner's rejection of appealed claims 2 and 3 which depend
therefrom.
With respect to dependent claims 4 and 5, the Examiner
adds Ommori to the combination of Japanese patent ‘240 and Ota
solely to meet the reinforcing plate “groove” limitation.
Ommori, however, does not overcome the innate deficiencies of
the combination of Japanese patent ‘240 and Ota and, therefore,
we do not sustain the rejection of dependent claims 4 and 5
under
35 U.S.C. § 103.
We now turn to the Examiner’s obviousness rejection of
independent claim 6 based on the combination of Japanese patent
‘240 and Kikuchi. Appellant has argued that Kikuchi suffers
from similar deficiencies as Ota with regard to the claimed
reinforcement plate arrangement. We agree. In our opinion,
there is nothing in Kikuchi to suggest that either of the hubs
78a, 78b, reinforce the substrates 73a, 73b or, in any case,
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