Appeal No. 2006-0178
Application No. 09/877,188
Accordingly, we hereby remand this application to the examiner for the purpose of
addressing and resolving on the written record whether claim 118 should be rejected under
35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by, or under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being obvious over,
Christensen taken alone (or in combination with other prior art under § 103).
Independent claim 104 is directed to a snowmobile having the above-discussed feature as
well as the feature wherein the frame is between about 1493 mm and 1913 mm long. These two
features are the only limitations of claim 104 which have been argued by the appellants in their
brief. In this regard, the appellants contend that “Claim 104 is not anticipated or rendered
obvious by Christensen … as there is no disclosure or suggestion of a steering position disposed
forward of the forward-most drive track axle, nor is there any disclosure or suggestion of a frame
between 1493 and 1913 mm long” (Brief, page 69).
Again, there is no convincing merit in the appellants’ argument concerning the steering
position feature. As for the claim length feature, it is true that the Christensen patent contains no
teaching or suggestion of appellants’ claimed frame length. However, it is significant that
patentee repeatedly describes his snowmobile as being conventional except for the steering
system or suspension of his invention (e.g., see lines 37-39 in column 1 and lines 12-14 in
column 2). This is significant because the conventional snowmobile disclosed in Figure 8 of the
appellants’ drawing has a frame length which reasonably appears to be within the here claimed
range of between about 1493 mm and 1913 mm. For example, in the conventional short frame
snowmobile of Figure 8, the distances for reference characters B, D, F and N total 1575 mm.
This fact reasonably supports the proposition that a conventional short frame snowmobile
possesses a frame length within the appellants’ claimed range. Since the snowmobile of
9
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007