Appeal No. 2002-1590 Page 5
Application No. 09/511,516
applied by the vehicle operator through the pedal (14).
Appellants’ assertion in the brief (page 11) that one skilled in
the art, in context, would readily understand that “a force
applied to said collapsible push rod” does not refer to reactive
force acting on the push rod due to deceleration of the vehicle,
is unpersuasive and would appear to have us read limitations from
the specification into the claim, which we will not do.
For the above reasons, we will sustain the examiner’s
rejection of independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 112, second
paragraph. It follows that claims 2 through 8 which depend from
claim 1 also suffer from the same indefiniteness and that the
examiner’s rejection of those claims on the same basis will
likewise be sustained.
Turning to the examiner's rejection of claims 1 and 2 under
35 U.S.C. § 102(a) based on Hjerpe, the examiner’s rejection of
claims 1, 2, 6 and 7 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) based on Okuhara,
and the rejections of claim 8 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on
Hjerpe and Laue or Okuhara and Laue, we emphasis again that these
claims contain language which renders the subject matter thereof
indefinite. Accordingly, we find that it is not reasonably
possible to apply the prior art relied upon by the examiner to
these claims in deciding the questions of anticipation under 35
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