Appeal No. 2006-0822
Application No. 10/054,253
require that it always so compress under any amount of force applied in any
direction or that it be compressed under the normal operating conditions of the
Teeri disc spring pillar assembly. Accordingly, the fact that the binding ring may
not compress under the load conditions illustrated in Figures 4 and 6 is immaterial
to the issue of whether Teeri meets the limitations of claim 16.
For the reasons set forth above, we do not find appellant’s arguments
persuasive that the subject matter of claim 16 is not anticipated by Teeri. We
therefore sustain the rejection of claim 16 and claims 24, 25 and 28 that stand or
fall therewith.
We turn our attention now to the rejection of claims 1-6, 8, 9, 13, 14 and 29-
32 as being unpatentable over Teeri in view of Rode. We agree with the appellant
that one of ordinary skill in the art would not have found any suggestion in the
combined teachings of Teeri and Rode to modify Teeri’s disc spring assembly to
include a spacer of the type taught by Rode or to compress such spacer to
plastically deform it. Accordingly, we shall not sustain the rejection of method
claims 29-32 as being unpatentable over Teeri in view of Rode.
We shall, however, sustain the rejection of claim 1, and dependent claims 2-
6, 8, 9, 13 and 14 which the appellant has not argued separately from claim 1, as
being unpatentable over Teeri in view of Rode. For the reasons discussed above
with respect to claim 16, we conclude that claim 1 reads on the structure of Teeri.
A disclosure that anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102 also renders the claim
unpatentable under 35 U.S.C. § 103, for “anticipation is the epitome of
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