Appeal No. 2000-1470 Page 5
Application No. 08/915,706
by the appellants. In that regard, we agree with the
appellants that neither Ritter or Leavitt teaches or suggests
a chain defined by a plurality of link members, having a wear
rail since an artisan would have understood the claimed phrase
"wear rail" to denote more than the bottom surface of Ritter's
links 23 (as viewed in Figure 2). Additionally, while Leavitt
does teach a drive sprocket 29 and idler sprockets 19 and 20
engaging a traction chain (composed of pivotally connected
links 21), we fail to find any teaching or suggestion in
Leavitt or Ritter for modifying Ritter's idlers 14 and 15 in
the manner proposed by the examiner to meet the above-noted
limitations. In our view, the only suggestion to arrive at
the claimed invention from the teachings of the applied prior
art stems from hindsight knowledge derived from the
appellants' own disclosure. The use of such hindsight3
2(...continued)
of references of record that have not been applied in the
rejection under appeal. These references will be given no
consideration since they were not included in the statement of
the rejection. See Ex parte Raske, 28 USPQ2d 1304, 1305 (Bd.
Pat. App. & Int. 1993).
3The examiner may wish to consider a search in the
following areas: Class 474, Endless Belt Power Transmission
(continued...)
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