Appeal No. 2004-0146
Application 09/851,911
footwear for leaving a personalized imprint on wet sand, wherein
a sole portion which is “at least partially transparent” includes
a bottom surface with a tight matrix of projections extending
therefrom, wherein each projection is removable, enabling a user
to look through the sole portion and remove a subset of the
projections corresponding to a desired personalized imprint.
In this rejection, the examiner concedes that the footwear
of Ellis, with its densely packed matrix of removable projections
(e.g., Fig. 11A), has no transparent sole portions. However,
the examiner points to Berger, noting transparent portions (3, 4)
of the footwear sole seen therein and the benefit described in
the patent of a simple and inconspicuous construction for
allowing viewing through the shoe sole, so that one can regularly
and accurately monitor or measure the remaining distance of the
toe tips from the portion of the shoe upper adjacent to the
outsole tip to see whether the shoe has become too small. From
the collective teachings of the applied references, the examiner
has concluded that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art to provide the shoe sole as taught by Ellis with
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