Appeal No. 2004-1280 Page 5
Application No. 09/630,938
We appreciate that the specification of the present application discloses athletic
shoes wherein the traditional hard plastic outsole is replaced with a soft outsole and a
hard chassis or with an integrally formed chassis and skin construct (specification, page
2). Claims 26, 29 and 30, however, merely recite an article of footwear including a sole
with at least one cleat, the sole comprising a chassis. These claims do not recite an
outsole structure in addition to the chassis and we, like the examiner, see no recited
structure in claim 26 which distinguishes the claimed footwear from Crowley’s athletic
shoe or the recited “chassis”1 from Crowley’s outsole member 12. Having found
appellant’s only argument with respect to the rejection of claims 26, 29 and 30
unpersuasive, we shall sustain this rejection.
We turn next to the rejection of claims 1, 4-9, 19-21, 26-29 and 35 as being
anticipated by Tong. Tong, in the embodiment illustrated in Figures 16 and 17,
discloses an athletic shoe having an insert member 120 extending from the heel portion
to the toe portion of the shoe and having rearfoot, midfoot and forefoot portions. The
extending portion 124 of Tong’s insert member extends into the forefoot region and is
formed by a plurality of fingers 122, as best seen in Figure 16. The extending portion “is
made to have an undulating or sinusoidal shape in cross section” (column 9, lines 27-
29) so that the extending portion acts as a spring to return energy to the user. This
1 The term “chassis” is generally understood to be “a frame” or “assembled frame and parts”
(Webster's New World Dictionary, Third College Edition (Simon & Schuster, Inc. 1988)) and we find no
definition in appellant’s specification which compels or even suggests a different interpretation of this term.
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