Appeal No. 2006-1546
Application No. 09/974,262
importantly, Appellants do not indicate in their specification
that their figures are drawn to scale. In fact, Appellants’
specification is completely silent about the sizes of any
features shown in their drawings, but particularly the size of
the ridge width and the tear line width. Because the
specification is silent about quantitative values for the ridge
width and tear line width, Appellants’ arguments based on their
ruler measurements taken from the drawings are of “little
value.” Wright, 59 F.2d at 1127, 193 USPQ at 335. Moreover,
because the drawings are not disclosed as being to scale,
conclusions regarding the quantitative values of the measured
ridge width compared with the measured tear line width are
speculative at best.
For the aforementioned reasons, we affirm the § 112, first
paragraph, lack of written description rejection.
35 U.S.C. § 103(a) Rejection
The Examiner rejects all the claims as being obvious and
therefore unpatentable over Yokota in view of Otsuka. The
Examiner states that Yokota discloses an airbag device having
all the limitations in independent claims 1 and 7 except for an
airbag cover with either “at least one independent ridge” (claim
7
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