Paielli’s disclosure is limited to the brake pad itself, with nominal reference to the rotor, and
does not provide any details as to the structure on which the pad is mounted. Accordingly, as
recognized by the examiner, Paielli lacks a base member on which the pad portion is mounted. As
evidenced by Hanisko, mounting of a brake lining or pad 11 on a brake shoe or base member 15 was
conventional in the art at the time of the appellant’s invention. It therefore would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the appellant’s invention to mount Paielli’s pad, including
body 22 and plates 22, 24, on a brake shoe or base member in such conventional manner.
The Paielli brake wear sensor arrangement differs from the arrangem ent disclosed in the
appellant’s specification in that Paielli’s sensor assembly is disposed in one piece of a two-piece pad
while the appellant’s pad is a single-piece, unitary structure. As stated by our reviewing court, however,
in In re Hiniker Co., 150 F.3d 1362, 1369, 47 USPQ2d 1523, 1529 (Fed. Cir. 1998), “the nam e of the
gam .” Limitations are not to be read into the claims from the specification. In re Ve is the claim an
Geuns, 988 F.2d 1181, 1184, 26 USPQ2d 1057, 1059 (Fed. Cir. 1993) citing In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319,
321, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed. Cir. 1989).
None of the appellant’s claims recites a one-piece, unitary brake pad. Independent claim 1
simply recites “a pad portion” and a pair of capacitive plates “disposed in and in contact with the pad
portion.” Independent claim 11 recites a pair of capacitive plates being disposed in and in contact with
“a portion of the brake pad subject to wear.” The examiner’s position that the body 22 of Paielli, which
wears as if it were part of pad 42 (col. 3, ll. 2-4) and in which the conductive plates 24, 26 and
capacitors C1, C3 and C4 are em bedded, is a “pad portion” as recited in claim 1 and “a portion of the
brake pad subject to wear” as recited in claim 11 is well founded.
In light of the above, the arguments in the appellant’s brief and reply brief fail to persuade us of
any error on the part of the examiner in rejecting claims 1-9 and 11-13 as being unpatentable over Paielli
in view of Hanisko. The rejection is thus sustained as to these claims.
Dependent claim 10 recites that contact between at least one of the plates and a rotor is
indicative of brake pad function. While the appellant (brief, pp. 21-22) is correct that the examiner has
not directly addressed this claimed feature, it is apparent that, akin to the appellant’s invention, contact
between the plates 24, 26 of Paielli’s sensor capacitor and the rotor will short the capacitor plates to the
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Last modified: November 3, 2007