Appeal No. 1999-2068
Application 08/650,038
Turning first to Appellants' claim 1, we first note that
the Examiner admits that Yano does not disclose the following
claim limitations: the display located forward of the steering
wheel; a plurality of switches located on the steering wheel
for selectively activating a feature group on the display; and
means located on the steering wheel for activating a feature
from the activated feature group on the display and for
adjusting a value of the activated feature group.
The Examiner has made multiple assertions of obviousness
in the rejection to allocate the components of the references
to provide these limitations. The first assertion is that it
would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in this
art at the time the invention was made to have the switching
means, as taught by Fujisawa, in the apparatus of Yano because
by having the switching means located on the steering wheel of
the automobile the driver has the switching means closer,
which minimizes the driver's distraction from the road while
trying to reach the switching means.
The second assertion is that it would have been obvious
to one of ordinary skill in the art to have the touch screen
feature group switches separate from the display device
11
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007