Appeal No. 2000-0818 Page 3
Application No. 08/949,917
orientation for facilitating lateral receipt of a member such as a nut or bolt and a closed
head orientation for engaging the member for rotation. Basically, the wrench comprises a
pair of pivotable arms each culminating in a free end. In the disclosed embodiment, three
gripped segments are carried by ends of the arms, which segments in the open orientation
are aligned in such a fashion as to allow the ends of two adjacent segments to separate
from one another (Figure 2), while the third, or base, segment moves longitudinally with
respect to the wrench axis. In the closed head position (Figures 1, 3, 5 and 7, the three
segments encircle the member that is to be turned.
The examiner has raised two issues under this rejection. The first is that lines 20-
25 of page 17 of the appellant’s specification, wherein the process of placing the wrench
head segments into the aligned configuration is described, “imply that an aligning function
results in an additional alignment, i.e. the aligned position eases the further alignment of
the device” (final rejection, Paper No. 5, page 2). We do not share the examiner’s opinion.
From our perspective, one of ordinary skill in the art would understand from the
specification that a single act is necessary in order to place the wrench segments in the
aligned position, that is, movement of the elements must be affected until mark 105 is
visible in window 106. While the language to which the examiner has directed our
attention might, in his opinion, be less than precise, it does not in our opinion suggest that
a second alignment step must, can, or will follow.
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