Appeal No. 1996-3507
Application 08/041,209
because it is not mentioned in the statement of the rejection.
Compare MPEP § 706.02(j) (7th ed., July 1998): "Where a
reference is relied on to support a rejection, whether or not
in a minor capacity, that reference should be positively
included in the statement of the rejection. See In re Hoch,
428 F.2d 1341, 1342 n.3, 166 USPQ 406, 407 n.3 (CCPA 1970)."
In any event, this admitted prior art involves controlling
damping as a function of the position of the accelerator
pedal, not as a function of vehicle speed, as required by
appellants' claims.
For the foregoing reasons, the rejection of claim 1 is
reversed.
Claim 8, which recites shock absorbers without specifying
that they are front and rear shock absorbers, specifies that
"the damping force characteristics of said shock absorbers are
maintained at a preselected high damping coefficient . . .
when the vehicle speed is substantially zero and the vertical
speed is below a preselected threshold value for a selected
period of time." This claim reads on the squatting
suppression routines employed in appellants' second and third
embodiments (Figures 16 and 18). For the reasons already
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