Appeal No. 2003-1937
Application No. 09/522,296
the applied prior art references, and to the respective positions
articulated by appellants and the examiner. As a consequence of
our review, we have made the determinations which follow.
Looking first at the examiner's rejection of claims 1, 6
through 12, 14, 15, 18, 28 and 29 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
being unpatentable over Mockridge in view of Take, Helmstetter
and Drajan, we note that on pages 4-5 of the answer the examiner
has urged that Mockridge differs from the claimed invention in
that Mockridge "does not show a shaft-securing portion
homogeneously formed as part of the outer shell structure." To
account for the above-noted difference, the examiner has looked
to the patents of Take, Helmstetter and Drajan, from which the
examiner has apparently derived teachings which "show it to be
old in the art to fabricate the shaft-securing portion, i.e., the
hosel, as part of the shell structure to form a unitary part."
Based on the combined teachings of the above-noted
references, the examiner has concluded that it would have been
obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art at the time
appellants' invention was made "to modify the golf club head of
Mockridge by casting the shaft-securing portion homogeneously
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