Appeal No. 2000-1628
Application No. 09/163,013
Kawaguchi and Yoshino, the examiner’s primary references,
disclose metal gaskets for use between the cylinder block and
cylinder head of an internal combustion engine.
The examiner (see pages 3 and 4 in the answer) considers
that the Kawaguchi gasket includes a “raised spacer layer” in
the form of a “soft” member 50 (see Figure 10), and that the
Yoshino gasket includes a “raised spacer layer” in the form of
an edge portion 52e of intermediate plate 52 (see Figure 5).
Kawaguchi teaches that member 50 “may be a soft metal sheet, a
heat-insulating graphite sheet, an aramide type heater sheet,
a resin or a rubber” (column 10, lines 9 and 10), which
functions to improve deformability of adjacent stop portion
35, absorb irregularities of the opposed block and head
fitting surfaces and absorb vibration between the head and
block during operation of the engine (see column 10, lines 15
through 23). Yoshino teaches that intermediate plate 52 is
made of material which is “softer” than that of gasket base
plates 4 and 6 (see column 8, lines 33 through 36).
Under one theory, advanced for the first time in the
answer, the examiner submits that claim 14 “could be
considered to be met by either Kawaguchi et al. or Yoshino
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007