Appeal No. 97-2481
Application No. 08/480,964
Exhibit A," and describes in paragraph 7 how he conceived the
subject matter of claim 1 during a meeting in March, 1992. 3 In
the absence of any evidence in the record showing that appellant
acquired his knowledge of the invention from another, there is no
basis for rejecting the claims under § 102(f).
Rejection (2): 35 U.S.C. § 103
The basis of this rejection is stated on pages 3 and 4 of
the examiner’s answer. The two secondary references, Reynolds
and Anderson, appear to be cumulative, so we will confine our
consideration to Anderson.
As the examiner notes, Anderson discloses an advantage to
using a non-circular, e.g., rectangular, contact in a
correspondingly-shaped bore in the insulator barrel in which the
contact (male or female) is located, namely, to prevent rotation
of the contact in the bore, and "thus prevent[ing] liability of
faults occurring, due to loosening of the connection between the
contact members and the wires soldered to them" (page 2, col. 1,
lines 39 to 46). We consider that this disclosure would have
suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art disposing the
rectangular cross-section connectors C of the APA in similarly-
shaped bores in order to achieve the advantage disclosed by
3 Appellant’s alleged conception is corroborated by Taj F.
Hanna in paragraph 6 of a declaration filed in this application
on November 29, 1995.
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