Appeal No. 2002-0882
Application 09/161,146
Claim 13 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Showalter in view of Morscheck, the admitted
prior art and Asahara.
Attention is directed to the appellants’ main, supplemental
and reply briefs (Paper Nos. 10, 12 and 14) and to the examiner’s
last office action and answer (Paper Nos. 11 and 13) for the
respective positions of the appellants and the examiner regarding
the merits of these rejections.1
DISCUSSION
Showalter, the examiner’s primary reference, discloses a
four wheel drive vehicle comprising an internal combustion engine
42, a conventional transmission 44 (either manual with a clutch
or automatic) and a transfer case 28 for shifting between low and
high gear ranges upon manual actuation of a selector switch 202
by the vehicle operator. The transfer case includes a planetary
gear assembly fully described in U.S. Patent No. 4,440,042 to
Holdeman which is incorporated by reference into the Showalter
disclosure (see column 4, lines 23 through 25). Of note is that
1 Although the statement of the first rejection in Paper No.
11 does not include claims 10 through 12 and 14 through 16, the
accompanying explanation of the rejection shows that the omission
was inadvertent.
4
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