Appeal No. 2000-0693
Application 08/845,282
fishing line and to enable the fishing line to slide
through the interior of the fishing rod more easily.
Thereafter, the examiner contended (final rejection
(Paper No. 17), page 5) that “[t]he varied thickness
limitation is deemed to be a matter of choice since the
function is the same and no showing of unexpected results was
made.”
The examiner’s present position with respect to the above
noted limitations of the independent claims is found on pages
4-5 of the answer and reads as follows:
The Office Action mailed on Jan. 21, 1997 states
near the bottom of page 3, that it would have been
obvious to provide annular projections within the
rod to reduce the contact area between the line and
the interior of the rod. The annular projections
are interpreted to be a film layer of varied
thickness. Also, as shown in the JA ‘836 patent in
Fig. 6, a tape layer 51 is wound around a mandrel
(in the production of the rod using bundled filament
yarns such as glass fibers or carbon fibers) in an
overlapping spiral fashion which produces a layer of
varied thickness to define a plurality of
projections as can be viewed in the Fig. The tape
produces a film layer of varied thickness because
the tape is overlaid and the overlapped areas are
thicker than a single layer of tape. See US ‘126 to
Barnett which is the English equivalent to JA ‘032
in column 4, lines 52-58.[6] This discloses an end
6 In that we have available to us a translation of the JA
‘032 reference, it is unnecessary for us to resort to the U.S.
equivalent thereof in order to determine the teachings of this
7
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