Appeal No. 2004-1756 Page 4
Application No. 09/880,882
whether the blade faces shown in figures 2A and 2B extend in a
linear or straight fashion.
In light of the foregoing, it is our determination that
figures 2A and 2B of the appellant’s drawing would convey with
reasonable clarity to those skilled in the art that the
appellant, as of his application filing date, was in possession
of the now claimed feature wherein the lower faces extend
“linearly”. We cannot sustain, therefore, the examiner’s § 112,
first paragraph, rejection of claims 1-8.
We also cannot sustain the examiner’s § 103 rejection of
claims 1-8 as being unpatentable over Bryant.
In the first place, we agree with the appellant that the
lower faces of Bryant’s blade are not planar and do not extend
linearly as required by appealed claim 1. This is because
patentee expressly teaches that the metal plate, from which his
blades are punched, is formed (via cold-rolling) with concave
sides (e.g., see figure 2, lines 81-84 on page 1 and lines 26-31
on page 2). Necessarily, the resulting blades also would have
sides which are concave or curved rather than sides or faces
which are planar and extend linearly as here claimed.
Secondly, there is no factual support for the examiner’s
conclusion that “it would have been an obvious matter of design
choice to specify the angle that the lower surface extends from
the upper surface to be within the range of 4 to 12 degrees"
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