Appeal No. 1999-1504 Page 7
Application No. 08/787,262
With regard to the examiner's rejection of claims 18, 20 and 21, the only issue in
dispute involves the limitation that "a distance from the longitudinal axis of a peripheral surface
of said bulge is continuously reduced from a first point diametrically opposite from the first
hood to a second point diametrically opposite from the second hood." As to claim 19, which
depends from claim 18, the only additional issue in dispute is with regard to the limitation that
"a center of said bulge is located at a position diametrically opposed to said first hood with
respect to said longitudinal axis."
The appellant and the examiner appear to be in agreement that Oyama does not disclose
such positioning of the peak or center of the bulge. However, it is the examiner's position
(final rejection, page 4) that the location of the high point of the bulge would have been an
obvious matter of design choice to be determined through routine experimentation, since the
function is the same and no showing of unexpected results has been made. We agree with the
examiner.
The stated objective of the Oyama handle is "to provide a fishing rod including a
handling portion where a fishing reel can be mounted without any step, gap or looseness"
(column 1, lines 59-61), thereby permitting the handle to be positioned in the middle portion of
the fishing rod rather than the end portion thereof (column 2, lines 7 and 8). This objective is
accomplished by providing the engaging grip (6) in contact with the cover cylinder (8)
integrally attached to the sliding member (17) having the movable hood (7), with the cover
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007