Appeal No. 1998-1263
Application No. 08/351,993
have been suggestive to one having ordinary skill in the art of
any particular material other than steel for the pressure plate,
since it is our understanding that steel is the acknowledged
conventional material for pressure plates.4 A steel pressure
plate in the airplane wheel disk brake of Du Bois would not have
rendered the claimed invention obvious. Accordingly, the eighth
rejection cannot be sustained.
The ninth rejection
We do not sustain the rejection of claim 18 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103 as being unpatentable over Du Bois in view of Stanton.
Dependent claim 18 is drawn to the feature of a rod to
indicate the wear of a brake stack.
While the Stanton reference addresses a disk type brake with
a movable washer 42, positioned on a stem 36 of a retractor 34,
which washer acts as a wear indicator, this teaching of Stanton
simply does not overcome the already discussed deficiency of the
4 Appellant's application informs us that steel is the
conventional material for pressure plates (page 10, lines 13 and
14).
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