Appeal No. 97-3824
Application 29/042,728
configuration for the tightening strap at the rear portion of
the belt, the examiner relies on Glover's straps 43 and 45
(Fig. 2), which extend in a V-formation from opposite sides3
of a vertical strap 38 (apparently incorrectly identified in
the Answer as "a central tab 47"). We agree with appellant 4
that
even if one accepts the Examiner's position that
Glover et al. disclose[s] the rear tab to be old in
the art, one would not know which elements to select
from the secondary references or how to modify such
elements for incorporation into the belt of the
primary references (or which elements to discard as
unused features of the references) to arrive at the
claimed design, absent hindsight teaching. [Opening
Brief at 4-5.]
The reason is that Glover's straps 43 and 45 do not correspond
to Yewer's webbing strap 12, which is the element to be
modified; instead, Glover's static belt 20 does. As a 5
result, we are not persuaded that one skilled in the art would
have been motivated to apply the V-shaped configuration of
3Answer at 5.
4Numeral 47 refers to the point of the V-shaped
projection 41 formed by straps 43 and 45 (Glover, col. 4,
lines 36-40).
5We note that the rear portion of Glover's static belt
20 is in the shape of an inverted V.
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