Appeal No. 98-2031
Application 08/794,154
claims 61 and 62 on appeal would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
appellants’ invention.
In this regard, we are of the opinion that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art to replace the spongy synthetic resin foam pad (41) of the goggles of Nishiyama with a pad
formed of a compliant and resiliently deformable gelatinous elastomer of the type taught in Chen. We
reach this conclusion for essentially the same reasons as expressed above with regard to the
combination of Runckel and Chen, except that the primary reference is now Nishiyama. As to claim 61
on appeal, we consider appellants’ arguments on pages 14-15 of their brief, that the goggles of
Nishiyama necessarily must fit inside the orbits of the user’s eyes to be based on total speculation, since
it appears to us that Nishiyama’s disclosure is much broader in its scope than appellants are willing to
concede. Note, for example, column 1, line 67 to column 2, line 2 of Nishiyama which discloses
goggles that are conventionally not limited to being mounted inside the orbits of a user’s eyes.
Moreover, even if one might conclude that the lens units (10) and pads (41) of Nishiyama would be
located within the orbits of a user’s eyes as in Runckel, we note that the portions of the frame (20) to
which the straps (50) of Nishiyama are attached would appear to provide portions of the frame that are
“sized to fit outside the orbits of the user’s eyes” as in appellants’ claim 61 on appeal.
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