Appeal No. 2000-2150
Application 29/083,483
the final rejection, mailed on July 19, 1999, page 2. The
examiner considered the difference between it and the claim
design as de minimis and not of patentable distinction. The same
position has been essentially maintained in the answer.
Even if we can agree with the examiner's position that it
would have been obvious for the artisan to have modified
Huebschen's Figure 12 according to the design features of a
planar jaw and a planar V-shape throat from the Figure 1 showing
in Vallone within 35 U.S.C. § 103, we reverse the rejection.
The so-called line of demarcation of the claimed design is
immediately evident, even upon first impression. We consider it
a dominant feature of the overall design of the open-end wrench
head depicted in Figures 1-5 for the claimed invention. The
transition from the curved area of the head to the straight line
of demarcation between the head and the handle appears to us to
be striking and therefore patentably distinct even in view of the
examiner's fair characterization of the line of demarcation
between the head and the handle in Figure 12 of Huebschen as a
shallow curved line. We therefore conclude that the ordinary
designer would not have considered this line of demarcation
presented in the design claim on appeal as de minimis on the
basis of the applied prior art.
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