Appeal No. 1997-4077
Application No. 08/441,989
claims, to the applied prior art references, and to the
respective positions articulated by the appellants and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we have made the
determinations which follow.
Rejection (I)
We turn first to the examiner's rejection of claim 1
based on 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being unpatentable over Babuder
in view
of Shinohara. After considering the collective teachings of
Babuder and Shinohara, we agree with the examiner that the
claimed invention would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time of appellants’ invention.
Shinohara discloses a pipe coupling comprising first and
second tubular coupling members 1 and 2, a ring-shaped gasket
3, a nut 4 for fixing the second coupling member to the first
coupling member with the gasket enclosed between opposed end
faces of the first and second coupling members (pages 5 and
6). The nut 4 is also disclosed as including liquid escape
holes 22 (page 7). Shinohara also specifically teaches that
the gasket 3 may be made of copper (page 6).
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007