Appeal No. 1999-1506
Application 08/815,151
(2) of claim 30 will be sustained. While this is tantamount
to a holding that claim 30 is anticipated by Benninger under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b), it is proper to sustain the § 103(a)
rejection because "[t]he complete disclosure of an invention
in the prior art is the ultimate or epitome of obviousness".
In re Avery, 518 F.2d 1228, 1234, 186 USPQ 161, 166 (CCPA
1975).
The rejection of claim 31 will likewise be sustained,
since appellant has not argued that it is separately
patentable. Moreover, we note that on page 1 of the reply
brief appellant states that he is willing to cancel this
claim, apparently in response to the examiner's comment on
page 4 of the answer that the claim is "improper".
Dependent claim 32 calls for the locking means to be made
integral with the body member "by screw thread means". The
examiner's position as to this claim is not clearly set forth,
but evidently is that it would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to modify the Benninger apparatus to
use screw-threaded means (a bolt) as the locking means in view
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