Appeal No. 1996-4067
Application No. 08/227,686
Before taking any further action in this application, the
examiner should carefully review the “Background of the
Invention” section of appellant’s specification at pages 1 and
2 to determine whether this background material constitutes
admitted prior art to appellant. Specifically, with
appellant’s cooperation, the examiner should determine whether
Figure 4 of the application represents admitted prior art with
respect to an apparatus having a high durability steel shaft,
and whether prior art workers recognized at the time of
appellant’s invention that the journal portion of the shaft in
association with the bearing metals was required to “have high
durability.” See the specification at page 2, lines 11-15,
and our discussion of this disclosure at page 2 of this
decision. Based on these determinations, the question of
obviousness should be reevaluated.
In summary, the decision of the examiner is reversed.
Other issues must be considered by the examiner before taking
any additional action in this application.
REVERSED
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