Appeal No. 2003-0387 Page 3
Application No. 09/772,275
all the evidence before us, it is our conclusion that the evidence adduced by the
examiner is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to
the claims under appeal. Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner's rejection of
claims 1 to 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Our reasoning for this determination follows.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of obviousness is
established by presenting evidence that would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to
combine the relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed invention.
See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re
Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013, 1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
The claimed subject matter
Claim 1, the only independent claim on appeal, reads as follows:
A damping system for a rail car truck having a bolster, a pair of side
frames, a plurality of friction wedges damping relative movement between the
bolster and the side frames, and a side spring supporting each friction wedge,
each friction wedge having a generally triangular shape with an angle 2 being
defined between a vertical friction surface and a sloping friction surface, the
angle 2 and the force P of each side spring being defined by the equations
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007