Appeal No. 2004-0184
Application No. 09/837,824
DISCUSSION
I. The 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) rejection of claim 1
Hand discloses a variety of discs designed to be thrown and
skipped across a liquid surface. For purposes of this appeal,
the examiner focuses on the disc or disc assembly member
illustrated in Figure 5. As described by Hand:
Referring to FIG. 5, we have disc assembly member 40
which has a body assembly made up of upper body member
41 and lower body member 42. Body member 41 and body
member 42 are joined at contact area 44 and they form a
rounded outer edge section 45. The body member 41 has a
sealing surface 47, an outer convex surface 48 and an
inner concave surface 49. The body member 42 has a
sealing surface 52 which acts with sealing surface 47 of
body member 41 to form the contact area 44. Body member
42 has an outer convex surface 54 and an inner concave
surface 55. The body members 41 and 42 form an air
pocket 57 defined by inner concave surfaces 49 and 55,
respectively, and sealing edges 52 and 47, respectively,
forming contact area 44. In a preferred embodiment, the
air pocket 57 would be airtight. The size of the air
pocket in proportion to the weight of the body members
41 and 42 determines if the disc assembly member 40
would float or sink. Generally, this type of structure
includes a structural means to cause the body member to
sink when stopped in water and therefore would be used
to provide a floating disc assembly member but a
controlled sink disc assembly member could also be
provided using the principles illustrated and discussed
above [column 2, line 74, through column 3, line 20].
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, expressly or under principles of inherency,
3
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