Appeal No. 1997-3742
Application 08/405,561
After a review of the disclosure, we find that the
limitation of “a rotor integrated with said disk in a one-
piece assembly,” as recited in independent claim 1, is
consistently supported by the specification and the drawings
to be a unified one-piece structure. Therefore, the Examiner
has improperly interpreted Appellants' one-piece rotor and
disk to be similar to Cooper’s disk and rotor. See In re
Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1055, 44 USPQ2d 1023, 1029 (Fed. Cir.
1997) (the term “integral” covers more than a unitary
construction).
The Federal Circuit states that "[t]he mere fact that the
prior art may be modified in the manner suggested by the
Examiner does not make the modification obvious unless the
prior art suggested the desirability of the modification." In
re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84
n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992), citing In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902,
221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984). The Federal Circuit
reasons in Para-Ordnance Mfg. Inc. v. SGS Importers Int’l
Inc., 73 F.3d 1085, 1088-89, 37 USPQ2d 1237, 1239-40 (Fed.
Cir. 1995), cert. denied, 519 U.S. 822 (1996), that for the
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