Appeal No. 2006-0172
Application No. 10/460,478
glare of the direct sun. As for the particular requirement in appellant’s independent
claims 1 and 13 that the screening flaps be made of “mesh fabric through which light
may pass,” the examiner relies on the disclosure at column 2, lines 12-20 of Kandel,
urging that the patentee clearly contemplated an embodiment of the venetian blind
therein that utilized a solid fabric panel to define the “screening elements” instead of the
separated strand fringe arrangement seen in the drawings of the patent. The examiner
further concluded that the disclosure in Kandel of a “suitable fabric” for the screening
elements would have been suggestive to one of ordinary skill in the art of a “mesh
fabric.” We agree with the examiner.
Given the disclosure in Kandel that the screening elements attached to the blind
slats are intended to provide “a screen when the slats are in their open position while at
the same time permitting ventilation through the blind” (Abstract, emphasis added), and
that the screening elements (whether in the form of a fringe or the fabric panel
suggested at column 2, lines 14-17) “screens the openings between the slats to insure
privacy[.]” and “[a]t the same time... permits adequate ventilation and obscures the glare
of the direct sun” (col. 3, lines 27-30), we concur with the examiner that one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time of appellant’s invention would have immediately envisioned
some form of “mesh” fabric as being a “suitable fabric” from which to make the solid
material blind screening elements alluded to at column 2, lines 14-17 of Kandel. Only
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