Appeal No. 1998-3027
Application No. 08/546,179
Accordingly, we will not sustain the rejection of claims
1 and 9 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. We also will not sustain the
rejection of claims 5, 11 and 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 since
these claims depend from claims 1 and 9 and neither Seidler
nor Schubert, applied for other reasons in the rejections of
the dependent claims, provides for the deficiencies noted
supra with regard to Ostapovitch and Wurster.
We now turn to independent claim 16 which does not have
the limitation of the tab lengths being less than one-quarter
the length of the fingers. Seidler is employed to show the
obviousness of using a cylindrical shape for the contact hood.
The argument centers about Takenouchi and whether it shows the
specifically claimed structure of the fingers recited in the
last paragraph of claim 16. It is our view that Figure 2 of
Takenouchi clearly shows the recited structure since contact
piece 19 is deformable and has a front and rear portion. The
front portion (left side) extends rearwardly and radially
inwardly and the rear portion (right side) extends rearwardly
and radially outwardly from the rear end of the front portion.
The rear end of the front portion is at the vertex, labeled as
7
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