Appeal No. 1998-1807
Application No. 08/090,770
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given
careful consideration to the appellants’ specification and
claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
determinations which follow.
The anticipation issues
We reverse the rejection of claims 1, 2, 8, 20, 21, 26,
30 and 31 as being anticipated by Wiand and the rejection of
claims 1, 2, 20 through 25 and 31 as being anticipated by
Hammar.
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, expressly or under principles of
inherency, each and every element of a claimed invention. RCA
Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444,
221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). It is not necessary that
the reference teach what the subject application teaches, but
only that the claim read on something disclosed in the
reference, i.e., that all of the limitations in the claim be
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