Appeal No. 2005-0028
Application No. 09/489,602
manner urged by the examiner so as to result in appellant’s
claimed bicycle crank structure. As our court of review
indicated in In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780,
1784 (Fed. Cir. 1992), it is impermissible to use the claimed
invention as an instruction manual or "template" in attempting to
piece together isolated disclosures and teachings of the prior
art so that the claimed invention is rendered obvious.
Although it has been long recognized in the bicycle arts
that it is desirable to reduce the overall weight of a bicycle,
e.g., by using tubular elements in the construction of various
bicycle components, such as the bicycle frame or, as in Bezin,
for constructing a straight pedal crank arm, we note that in
pursuing the objective of providing “a weight-optimized crank arm
which can be manufactured at low cost” (col. 1, lines 36-38),
Schmidt opted to go in a different direction. In particular,
Schmidt devised a weight-saving crank arm design having two
spaced-apart solid cross-section connecting members or arms (2,
3) extending between the pedal eye (4) and the hub (13) for
receiving the spindle shaft end, wherein the connecting members
(2, 3) are arranged at a relatively large angle (21) with respect
to each other so that one connecting member will carry mostly
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