Appeal No. 2000-0512
Application No. 08/880,760
of the chair in a direct mode of use is seated to face in a forward direction with
his legs in front of the front legs, and in a reverse mode of use the occupant is
seated rearwardly with his legs then in the free spaces adjacent said rear legs.
In rejecting claim 1 as being unpatentable over Johnson, the examiner's position, in
essence, is that the chair disclosed by Johnson meets all of the recited limitations, with the
exception of the "outwardly swelling hips" and the back panel being "contoured." According
to the examiner, providing the back section with contours and extending the hips outwardly are
merely matters of design choice (answer, page 4).3
In particular, the examiner considers Johnson's seat 12 to be a "lobe-shaped" seat
having a generally-straight front, an arcuate rear end coupled at its center to the crotch zone
and "inwardly curved opposing sides extending from the generally-straight front end to the
center of said arcuate rear end to create between the curved sides and the rear legs free spaces"
as recited in claim 1. We do not agree. Even if the seat, despite its generally rectangular
shape with parallel front and rear edges 14, 16 and parallel side edges 18, were considered to
be broadly "lobe -shaped," by virtue of its rounded corners 20, it lacks "inwardly curved4
opposing sides extending from the generally-straight front end to the center of said arcuate rear
end" as also required by the claim.
3It has been held that features which relate to ornamentation only and have no mechanical function
whatsoever cannot be relied upon for patentability of a claim in a utility patent application under 35 U.S.C. § 111.
See In re Seid, 161 F.2d 229, 231, 73 USPQ 431, 433 (CCPA 1947).
4A "lobe" is broadly defined as "a rounded projecting part" (Webster's New World Dictionary, Third
College Edition (Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1988)).
4
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