Appeal No. 1998-1642 Page 7
Application No. 08/541,894
the examiner’s rejection as it is directed to claim 24 and
claims 25 through 28, 30, and 32 dependent therefrom. We will
also not sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 35 as this
claim also recites that the blade is held under tension.
The examiner entered a new rejection of all claims in the
Examiner’s Answer. The appellants have not argued the
patentability of independent claim 33 and claims 34, 37 and 39
dependant therefrom in the Reply Brief. The appellants’
arguments are directed to the Dillon reference, rather than
Hoffman on which this rejection is based. Therefore, we are
constrained to affirm the rejection as it is directed to
claims 33, 34, 37 and 39.
Appellants argue that Hoffman does not disclose that the
saw blade is pulled tight against the first member. The
specification does not include a definition for “pull.”
However, Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary,
The Riverside University Publishing Company (1984) defines the
verb “to pull” as “to apply force to so as to cause or tend to
cause motion toward the source of the force.” Hoffman
discloses and depicts in Figures 8a and 8b that the balls 218,
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