Appeal No. 1999-1835
Application No. 08/654,976
V. Rejection of Claims 13 and 15 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over the
Combined Teachings of JP '108, JP '712, and Yamaguchi
The examiner found:
Japan '108 discloses a pneumatic tire, which one
of ordinary skill in the art would readily understand
as being vulcanized as all pneumatic tires are, having
blocks which are defined by circumferential grooves
and lateral grooves wherein each block contains plural
sipes. In figure 8, Japan '108 shows each sipe as
having a bent portion. In figures 2 and 6, Japan '108
shows each sipe as having a "flask shaped" enlarged
portion at the bottom thereof. Japan '108
substantially discloses the claimed tire except for
the sipe terminating the [sic] in the block instead of
being open at both ends.
(Examiner's answer, page 12.) JP '108 also teaches that a
"semi-open type" sipe in which only one end is connected to a
peripheral [circumferential] groove is known in the art. (Page
4.) JP '108 further teaches as follows:
[T]he inventors of this invention studied hard; as a
result, they discovered that, by leaving at least one
end of the sipe open to a side surface of the tire
peripheral groove or the buttress part, and by placing
a narrow groove whose at least one end is open to the
side surface of the peripheral groove on the inner
side surface of the sipe, the water can be drained
through the narrow groove on the inner side of the
sipe even when the sipe is closed when touching the
ground, which drastically increases the draining
effect.
(Page 6; underlining added.)
Given the teachings of JP '108, we concur with the examiner
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it prima
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