Appeal No. 1998-1533 Page 11
Application No. 08/411,202
The examiner further determined (final rejection, pp. 4-5)
that it would have been a further obvious expedient at the
time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill
in the art to
have provided Tarter Fig 5 with a "footprint" 80 which
would be less than the 1/10 (see the bottom of column 3)
since it was known in the art that the "footprint" would
increase because of wear in the embodiment of Fig. 5 (see
column 4, lines 26-30), and thus with a larger footprint
the "squeal" frequency would decrease to one which would
be capable of being heard by the human ear (See Tarter
Fig. 3).
The appellants argue (brief, pp. 8-9) that the combined
teachings of Tarter and Feldmann would not have suggested
reducing the total width of Tarter's pad member and that
Feldmann's teachings would have suggested increasing the size
of Tarter's pad member. Specifically, the appellants contend
that claim 1 recites "that each friction pad member has a
total upper width less than substantially 1/12 of the
circumferential length of the disc rotor where the rotor is
brought into frictional engagement with the friction pad
member" and that Tarter and Feldmann would not have suggested
this feature.
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