Appeal No. 2002-1685 Page 6
Application No. 08/995,431
We turn next to the examiner’s rejection of claim 20 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over Lile. In support of
this rejection, the examiner states:
The patent to Lile shows a crab trap as
discussed above. Lile shows a top portion
and a bottom portion with a gap between the
members. Lile does not disclose if the gap
is located at a midpoint between the top and
bottom portion, but it appeals to be close to
the midpoint. At any rate, it would have
been obvious to locate the gap at the
midpoint between the top and bottom member
since the exact location of the gap is a
matter of design choice to be determined
through routine experimentation since the
function is the same and no showing of
unexpected results was made. [final rejection
at pages 3 to 4]
We will not sustain this rejection because we are of the
opinion that Lile does not suggest at least one tensioning member
as is recited in claim 14 from which claim 20 depends. In fact
Lile suggests the opposite by disclosing that the compartment is
substantially rigid (page 1, col. 1, lines 32 to 35).
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