Appeal No. 98-0680
Application No. 08/685,160
been obvious to mount the air bag assembly of Good, as
modified by Rion, in the dashboard of a vehicle in view of the
teachings of Sakurai. The appellants, however, note that
claim 25 requires that the air bag have a direction of
deployment "generally towards an oppositely seated vehicle
occupant" and contend that Sakurai appears to have a bag
deployment which is in an "upward direction." We are
unpersuaded by such a contention. First, we observe that the
primary reference to Good teaches that the air bag deployment
should be "toward the passenger" (column 1, line 27).
Accordingly the artisan, when incorporating the air bag
assembly of Good (as modified by Rion) into a dashboard in
accordance with Sakurai's teachings, would deploy the air bag
"generally directly towards an oppositely seated vehicle
occupant" as claimed. Second, the air bag assembly of Sakurai
is expressly stated to operate "to protect the occupant
seating on the assistant driver's seat from impacts" (column
1, lines 13-15) and, although it appears from Fig. 1 of
Sakurai that there might be a slight upward component in the
direction of bag deployment, we nevertheless are of the
opinion that the direction of Sakurai's bag deployment can be
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