Appeal No. 2001-1450
Application 08/477,640
natural contour of all of the foot, the bottom as well as the
sides.” As further noted, the fully contoured shoe sole assumes
that the resulting slightly rounded bottom when unloaded will
deform under load and flatten, just as the human foot bottom is
slightly rounded unloaded but flattens under load. Thus, the
specification notes that the shoe sole material must be of such
composition as to allow the natural deformation following that of
the foot.
Looking to claims 22 and 63 on appeal, we note that these
claims each define a shoe sole for providing the wearer with a
stable interaction with the ground, “like the interaction
resulting from the curved bottom surface of the wearer’s foot
sole on the ground.” To that end, the claimed shoe sole
includes, among other features, “a shoe sole underneath portion
[28b] located beneath an intended wearer’s foot sole location in
the shoe sole, including at least one concavely rounded portion,”
wherein the concavely rounded portion (as viewed from the
perspective of the wearer’s foot) has 1) “an inner concavely
rounded surface [30] near the intended wearer’s foot sole
location, as viewed in a frontal plane, when the shoe is upright
and not under a bodyweight load,” and wherein the concavity
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