Appeal No. 2003-0668
Application No. 09/530,451
a method of manufacturing such a steel wire and spring
[page 2, paragraph three].
Appealed claims 1-6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as
being unpatentable over Yamao in view of JP '833. Appealed
claims 7-9 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being
unpatentable over the same combination of references.
Upon careful consideration of the opposing arguments
presented on appeal, we will not sustain the examiner's
rejections.
We consider first the examiner's § 103 rejection of
claims 1-6. While Yamao discloses a method of making a steel
wire comprising amounts of C and Si which overlap the claimed
ranges, Yamao does not disclose that the steel wire has a cross
section having the presently claimed difference in average
hardness between the surface and inner regions. Cognizant of
this deficiency in the referenced disclosure, the examiner
reasons that since Yamao discloses making a steel wire that is
substantially similar to appellants' wire in composition and
methodology, one of ordinary skill in the art would have
reasonably expected the wire of Yamao to have the claimed
difference in hardness between the surface and inner regions. In
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