Appeal No. 99-1024
Application 29/062,504
weight.
It would have been obvious to a designer of
ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention
was made to have provided the Winston patent
reference 4,966,365 weight with a buckle for the
strap, and to have omitted the grommet, in view of
what is shown and suggested by the prior art
disclosed in the Winston patent reference.
Moreover, said modification would have resulted in
an overall appearance strikingly similar to the
claimed design and no patentable ornamental advance
is seen there over [answer, pages 2 and 3].
The appellant does not dispute (1) the examiner’s
implicit determination that the Winston wrist or ankle weight
design meets the threshold Rosen requirement for something in
existence, the design characteristics of which are basically
the same as those of the claimed design, or (2) the propriety
of the examiner’s proposed combination of the Winston design
and the prior art design discussed by Winston. The appellant
does submit, however, that the short, transverse lines of
stitching in the claimed design render it patentably distinct
from any design which would have been suggested by Winston
(see pages 3 and 4 in the brief). As best shown in Figures
3 through 6 in the Winston reference, both the Winston design
and the prior art design discussed by Winston include
transverse lines of stitching which extend through
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