Appeal No. 2002-0334 Page 3
Application No. 08/779,361
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence
of our review, we make the determinations which follow.
Claim 1:
A volatile corrosion inhibiting device for firearms comprising:
an inner sleeve;
an exterior sleeve sized to fit over the inner sleeve; and
means for dispensing volatile corrosion inhibiting materials
disposed within the inner sleeve.
The examiner has rejected independent claim 1 and dependent claims 4 and 8
as being anticipated1 by Cech. Among the limitations in claim 1 is “means for
dispensing volatile corrosion inhibiting materials disposed within the inner sleeve,”
which the examiner finds in the Answer (page 3) to be readable on element 14 of Cech.
The appellant disagrees, arguing on pages 10 and 11 of the Brief that
the means employed by Cech does not disclose the means employed in
the applicant’s invention. In Cech, the corrosion resistant insert member
is partially slipped into the jacket which allows a portion of the corrosion
resistant member to remain permanently exposed. Additionally, the jacket
in Cech does not serve any functional purpose relating to the corrosion
resistant material. By contrast, in the applicant’s invention, the core
containing the volatile corrosion inhibitor material is completely inserted
into the inner sleeve which is then covered by the exterior sleeve. Thus,
the means for dispensing volatile corrosion inhibiting materials disposed
within the inner sleeve in the applicant’s invention is not disclosed in
Cech.
1Anticipation is established only when a single prior art reference discloses, expressly or under the
principles of inherency, each and every element of the claimed invention. See, for example, RCA Corp. v.
Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
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