Appeal No. 1997-3624
Application 08/398,522
Thus, the artisan seeking to create a
current breaker apparatus for a battery may be
inclined to use cutting means, as both the
[Japanese] abstract and the [British] reference show
that cutting means work well when responding to an
increase in temperature or pressure. Moreover, the
prior art teaches that a cutter works when placed
above the pressure sensing means or when it is an
integral part of the current [sic, pressure] sensing
means. Thus, it simply becomes a matter of
engineering and design options in selecting the type
of cutter useful in a current breaking means. In
that, it is known in the art to break the current
breaker from the bottom or from the top, hence as
long as the current is shut off by braking [sic,
breaking] the conductor the cutters are considered
equivalent [answer, pages 5 and 6].
Expedients which are equivalent to each other, however,
are not necessarily obvious in view of one another. In re
Scott, 323 F.2d 1016, 1019, 139 USPQ 297, 299 (CCPA 1963).
Hence, that the lead cutting constructions respectively
disclosed by the Japanese
and British references might be equivalents is not dispositive
of the obviousness issue raised by the proposed reference
combination.
Moreover, the mere fact that the prior art may be
modified in the manner proposed by an examiner does not make
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