Appeal No. 2005-0355 Page 2
Application No. 10/080,714
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a method of manufacturing rolling elements,
the rolling surface of which are in contact with a raceway, at least one of the surfaces of
the raceway and the rolling elements being provided with a topography comprising
recesses which are generally isolated from each other by lands and which may contain
a lubricant. A copy of the claims under appeal is set forth in the appendix to the
appellants’ brief.
The examiner relied upon the following prior art references in rejecting the
appealed claims:
Miyasaka 5,592,840 Jan. 14, 1997
Mayumi H4-321816 Nov. 11, 19921
(Japanese published unexamined patent publication)
The following is the only rejection before us for review.
Claims 1, 2 and 4-6 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable
over Mayumi in view of Miyasaka.
1 The examiner has referred to this document as “Toru.” Additionally, on page 2 of the answer
(Paper No. 16), the examiner has listed “Japanese Pat. 04-321816" as the prior art of record relied upon,
while the statement of the rejection on page 3 of the answer refers to only the “Patent Abstract” of that
publication. Thus, it is not clear whether the abstract only, or the entire patent publication, is relied upon in
the rejection. We also note that the “Patent Abstract” document is not in the application file. The USPTO
has, however, obtained a translation of the entire patent publication and a copy is appended hereto. In the
interest of completeness, we have considered both the patent abstract portion of the translation and the
translation of the entire document in our review of this rejection.
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