Appeal No. 2005-1242 Page 3
Application No. 09/242,014
Claim 1 stands rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by U.S.
Patent No. 5,454,8041 to Widlund.
The conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner and the appellant regarding
the above-noted rejection are set forth in the answer (mailed September 23, 2003) and
the brief (filed July 3, 2003).
OPINION
In reaching our decision in this appeal, we have given careful consideration to
the appellant's specification and claim 1, to the Widlund patent, and to the respective
positions articulated by the appellant and the examiner. As a consequence of our
review, we will not sustain the anticipation rejection of claim 1 for the reasons which
follow.
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art reference discloses,
expressly or under the principles of inherency, each and every element of a claimed
invention. RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221
USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). In other words, there must be no difference between
1Issued October 3, 1995.
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