Appeal No. 2000-1221
Application No. 29/070,030
make to the eye of a designer of tires of ordinary skill.3
The appellant's design gives an overall impression of aligned
or parallel tread structures which is not present in the Bonko
'923 design.
In addressing this difference, the examiner notes that
Bonko '631 teaches the use on tires of central raised portions
which all lean in the same direction. The examiner then
concludes that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time of the invention to reorient the
central raised portions in the Bonko '923 design to all lean
in the same direction, as taught by the Bonko '631 design,
resulting in a design having an appearance strikingly similar
to that of the claimed design (answer, page 4).
We have carefully considered the combined teachings of
Bonko '923 and Bonko '631, but we find therein no suggestion
to combine the references as the examiner has proposed to
arrive at the appellant's claimed design. As the court in In
3Compare Ex parte Pappas, 23 USPQ2d 1636, 1638 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int.
1992) (Differences between the appellant's claimed design and the prior art
designs were found de minimis, in that the net effect of such differences, if
any, did not "affect the appearance of the claimed design as a whole and the
impression that the design would make to the eye of a designer of ordinary
skill.").
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