Appeal No. 1999-0221
Application No. 08/766,847
Looking for the moment to the teachings present in the
prior art, there is no question that Gumkowski discloses the
basic structure recited in claim 1, over which the appellant
believes his invention to be an improvement. In our opinion,
one of ordinary skill in the art would have been cognizant of
the fact that relative rotation between the retaining spring
and the brake pad is undesirable, and would have recognized
that among the purposes in Gumkowski for providing the hole
and the mounting projection with complementary D-shaped
configurations is the prevention of such relative rotation.
Feller states that his industry was “well aware” of the
problem of relative motion between elements attached by means
of a circular opening and a circular foot or stem (column 1,
line 12 et seq.), for even after riveting they “tend[ed] to
rotate within their bore” (column 1, line 32). This gave rise
to the requirement for “a very precise and fixed attachment”
(column 1, lines 46 and 47), which Feller accomplished by
maintaining the circular cross-section of the stem but
replacing the circular cross-section of the hole with a “non-
circular cross-sectional configuration” (column 2, lines 8 and
9). As shown in Figure 5, this comprised a square hole and a
11
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