Appeal No. 2001-0467
Application No. 29/100,490
references would not result in appellant's claimed design.
Our reasons for this conclusion follow.
As the court in In re Harvey, 12 F.3d 1061, 1063, 29
USPQ2d 1206, 1208 (Fed. Cir. 1993) stated,
[i]n ornamental design cases, a proper obviousness
rejection based on a combination of references
requires that the visual ornamental features (design
characteristics) of the claimed design appear in the
prior art in a manner which suggests such features
as used in the claimed design. If, however, the
combined teachings suggest only components of a
claimed design, but not its overall appearance, an
obviousness rejection is inappropriate [citations
omitted].
Here, as we noted above, the Decursu and Simpson designs
present two aesthetically different end cap alternatives, the
Decursu end caps having the appearance of inclined elbows and
the Simpson end caps having the appearance of quarter-pies.
Absent appellant's own design, we are at a loss to know why
the ordinary designer would have singled out only the curved
outer faces, and not the flat inner faces, overall quarter-pie
shape and enlarged end flanges of the end caps, for
incorporation into the Decursu design as the examiner
proposes. In any event, while Simpson does show a handle
having end caps with curved outer faces, those curved outer
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