Appeal No. 1998-0607 Page 13
Application No. 08/506,857
mirror on either of Eustache's modules (the recipient module 100 or wiping module 200) so as
to arrive at the claimed invention.
Accordingly, we shall not sustain the examiner's rejection of claim 1, or of claims 2-5
which depend from claim 1, as being unpatentable over Eustache in view of Miller.
Rejection (4)
In making this rejection, the examiner asserts that it would have been obvious to a
person skilled in the art to provide a rear view mirror assembly on the modular wiping
assembly of Eustache in view of the teaching of Charles (answer, page 8). Charles discloses a
wiper system for a raked (swept back so as to reduce the coefficient of drag) windshield
wherein the side edges of the windshield form a shallow V, including an upper branch formed
along a body door pillar line 18 and a lower branch formed along a hood line 20. The pivot
points for the wiper arms 22 are located at or near the juncture of the door pillar edge 18 and
hood line edge 20, at the base of the V, so that, as illustrated in Figure 1, the wiper arms are
oscillated back and forth far enough to cover substantially the entire surface area of the
windshield (column 3, lines 8-34). The vehicle body 10 also has a pair of aerodynamically
shaped side mirror housings 26, each mirror housing having a fairing 28 that extends out
partially along the length of the hood line 20 and is slotted where it hangs over the surface of
the windshield. Thus, the pivot for each wiper arm can be located under a housing 26 and the
wiper arm can move through the slotted fairing. Additionally, each wiper arm can be stopped
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