Appeal No. 2002-1050
Application 09/425,505
of the yaw should be determined with some accuracy
[column 5, lines 32 through 44].
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, expressly or under principles of inherency,
each and every element of a claimed invention. RCA Corp. v.
Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ
385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). As framed by the appellants, the
dispositive issue with respect to the anticipation rejection of
claim 1 is whether Gerber meets the claim limitations relating to
the “compensating lateral directional offsets.”
The examiner submits (see page 4 in the answer) that these
limitations find response in Gerber’s description of the
corrective yawing motions because these motions produce lateral
directional offsets of the tip or cutting edge of the cutting
blade.
The appellants dispute this assessment of the claim
limitations at issue and the Gerber disclosure, arguing that
[Gerber’s] yaw or orientation of the blade about its
vertical axis, as shown in FIG. 8, is adjusted to
counteract lateral forces exerted on the blade in order
to straighten the blade and thereby ensure that the
desired cutting path is the same as the actual cutting
path. In other words, it is the orientation of the
blade about its vertical axis, rather than a
compensating lateral directional offset (i.e., moving
the blade in a direction offset from the desired
6
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