Appeal No. 2004-0146
Application 09/851,911
necessarily result in projections on the sole of the footwear of
Ellis being sized in the manner set forth in appellant’s claim 1.
Nor do we find any evidentiary basis to conclude, as the examiner
has, that “the size of the projections (the thickness of the
sole) is recognized in the art to be a variable that is result
effective” (answer, page 4). Accordingly, we will not sustain
the examiner’s rejection of independent claim 1 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) based on Ellis.
It follows from our determination with regard to independent
claim 1 above that we will likewise not sustain the examiner’s
rejections of claims 3, 4 and 11 through 14, which depend from
claim 1, under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) based on Ellis alone.
As for independent claim 16 and the requirement therein that
the footwear be a sandal or thong including a sole portion having
a densely packed matrix of projections, wherein each projection
is removable so as to enable a user to remove a subset of the
projections corresponding to a personalized imprint, the examiner
has pointed to the disclosure in Ellis indicating that the
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007