Appeal No. 2002-2305
Application No. 09/473,792
Appellant disagrees with the examiner's assertions that the
features noted by the examiner to be missing from Kamazawa are
merely matters of obvious design choice, and contends that the
examiner has engaged in a classic case of hindsight
reconstruction. More particularly, appellant urges that the
examiner has not given any reason or justification for why the
specific choice of materials as claimed by appellant would have
been an obvious design choice. Appellant also argues that since
there is no motivation or suggestion in Kamazawa, alone or when
considered with Priest, to use the specifically claimed materials
in the specifically claimed amounts, the examiner's rejection of
the claims on appeal is improper. As for the rejection of
dependent claim 9, appellant notes that item (33) of Priest,
pointed to by the examiner as being a "cap," is a nut to hold the
applicator (32) to the shaft (31) and is not a cap, and thus
would not have been suggestive of a titanium cap like that
required in claim 9.
After reviewing the applied references (Kamazawa and Priest)
and considering the teachings one of ordinary skill in the art at
the time of appellant's invention would have fairly derived from
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