Appeal No. 2004-1530
Application No. 09/870,770
basis, the examiner concludes that “it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art to optimize the number of teeth of
the pinion mate gear and the side gear in the differential admitted
to be prior art such that the limitations of claims 1-9 are met”
(final rejection, page 4).
This alternative theory of obviousness likewise is not well
taken. It is not clear to us, and the examiner has not adequately
explained, why one of ordinary skill in the art would have any
interest or incentive whatsoever in selecting a combination of side
gear and pinion mate gear for a differential to provide a
particular rate of rotation of a wheel that has lost traction.
This is especially so in that it is common practice to explicitly
design differential gearing to have “limited slip” capabilities so
that when a wheel losses traction, the opposite wheel does not
freely spin. Thus, even in view of the examiner’s taking of
Official Notice, there is no teaching aside from the hindsight
knowledge first gained from reading appellant’s disclosure for
modifying AAPA in a manner that would have resulted in the claimed
3(...continued)
examiner’s taking of Official Notice in this regard, we accept
the examiner’s statement as being a fair representation of what
is well-known to those of ordinary skill in the art.
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