Appeal No. 1998-2028 Page 3
Application No. 08/365584
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to the
appellants' specification and claims, the applied prior art references, the respective
positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner, and the guidance provided by our
reviewing court. As a consequence of our review, we make the determinations which
follow.
The appellants’ invention is directed to providing a figurine with a bunch of fibers as
hair, for example, which bunch comprises a plurality of nonilluminatable fibers and a
plurality of illuminatable fibers. As manifested in claim 1, the illuminatable fibers are
optical fibers and each one is disposed closely proximate a plurality of nonilluminatable
fibers and is of lesser length than the surrounding nonilluminatable fibers.
It is the examiner’s view that Konta discloses all of the subject matter of claim 1
except for the illuminatable fibers being of a shorter length than the nonilluminatable fibers,
but that Cocca teaches making illuminatable fibers of different lengths, and therefore it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify the hair of Konta in
accordance with the requirements of claim 1 because the length of hair on a doll is a
design choice (Answer, pages 5 and 6). The appellants argue that the only suggestion for
doing so is hindsight. We agree.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007