Appeal No. 2004-0837
Application No. 09/778,481
In any event, we find that the purpose of the sensor
described in Hirama and/or Yamagami is to detect defects in the
elevator rope as indicated supra to prevent major elevator
accidents which could take many lives. To prevent such
catastrophic accidents, one of ordinary skill in the art would
have been led to place the sensor described in Hirama and/or
Yamagami to obtain “information regarding a wear condition of a
portion of the rope that is most likely to wear...” We take
official notice that one of ordinary skill in the art would have
monitored the portions of the rope, which were subject to the
highest stress (e.g., the portion of the rope subject to
continuous bending, especially at an extreme bending angle (based
on the sizes and the locations of sheaves)) under the worst case
loading scenario to prevent catastrophic accidents. See, e.g.,
Saito, column 2, lines 58-66 and column 3, lines 15-16.
The appellants argue that Yamagami and Hirama do not teach
or suggest a detector “supported to move with the [elevator] cab”
as recited in claims 3 and 11. The appellants, however, do not
dispute the examiner’s finding at page 6 of the Answer that:
Saito illustrates the use of roping ratios other than
1:1 and teaches in the Background of the Invention that
as such a sheave may be placed on the cab to obtain a
desired rope ratio. As such, the detector would be
placed on the cab sheave.
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