Appeal No. 1996-2163
Application 08/106,541
radius of curvature and predetermined number of derivatives as well as the upper end
acoustical wavelengths of antenna operation recited in claims 18 and 19 on appeal.
For his part, appellant makes reference to his prior patent 5,298,911, issued on
March 29, 1994 with an effective filing date of September 18, 1990. This patent concerns
serrated-rolled edge microwave antennas, and appellant regards this as a part of the art of
acoustical antennas of the claimed invention on appeal here. Appellant also makes
reference to the Burnside article referenced as an appendix to the principal Brief on
appeal entitled “An Improved Main Reflector Design for Compact Range Applications”,
published in IEEE Trans. Ant. & Prop., Vol. AP 35, No. 3, March 1987, pp. 342-347.
After having studied appellant’s present specification and drawings as well as
these two documents, we agree with his basic assertion that the terms questioned by the
examiner in dependent claims 18 and 19 have a certain measure of standardness and are
well known to the artisan. Appellant’s own prior patent at column 2, lines 54-64 discusses
that the skirt of a serrated-rolled edge antenna must be smooth and continuous, indicating
that the minimum radius of curvature at any part of this skirt ought to be at least on the
order of the upper end radio wavelength of antenna operation to assure the smooth
variation of the skirt surface. Appellant further explains that this smoothness and continuity
means that the radius of curvature and a certain number of its derivatives are continuous
across the junction of the antenna surface and the serrated-rolled skirt. Similar language
with respect to the derivatives is discussed in the present specification in association with
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