Appeal No. 2004-1796 Page 6
Application No. 09/682,167
The first of the Section 103 rejections is that claims 1-14 are unpatentable over
LG in view of Barrowman and Johnson. Looking first to claim 1, in arriving at this
conclusion the examiner has found all of the subject matter recited in this claim to be
disclosed or taught by LG except for (1) the center of gravity being between the
Barrowman center of pressure and the center of lateral area, (2) the center of gravity
being less than 60% of the distance from the Barrowman center of pressure to the
center of lateral area, and (3) a side thrusting means. However, the examiner has taken
the position that it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify
the LG rocket to locate the center of gravity between the center of Barrowman pressure
and the center of lateral area because “it appears as if this design concept is common
knowledge in the art,” apparently in view of unidentified teachings of Barrowman which
suggest doing so “for the purpose of providing aerodynamic stability to the rocket”
(Answer, page 4). With regard to the side thrusting means, the examiner opines that in
view of Johnson’s teaching of providing side thrust ports it would have been obvious to
modify the LG rocket to provide it with side thrusting means for disrupting the
aerodynamic stability of the rocket (Answer, sentence bridging pages 4 and 5). As for
the limitation that the center of gravity be located less than 60% of the distance between
the Barrowman center of pressure and the center of lateral area, the examiner is of the
view that this merely involves the discovery of a result effective variable, which is
considered to involve only routine skill in the art (Answer, page 5).
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