Appeal No. 2006-1848
Application No. 10/352,360
three-sided trailer of Carter and thus meet the legal requirements of
having a trailer enclosed on all four sides.
Carter discloses all of the elements of claim 6, except for an
explicit disclosure of “one or more articulating doors hinged to each
side edge of each wall, allowing the open side to be closed off for
transport.” Elliott teaches using bi-fold doors to have a trailer
enclosed on all four sides, such that the cargo remains secure even if it
shifts during transit.
A person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention
and confronted with the general problem faced by the appellant would
have been motivated to apply the teaching of bi-fold doors disclosed
in Elliott to the trailer of Carter to solve the problem of a fully-
enclosed trailer having ease of access for loading and unloading
through the side of the trailer. We thus conclude that based on these
teachings of the prior art, a person having ordinary skill in the art at
the time of the invention would have viewed the subject matter of
claim 6 as a whole to have been obvious in view of the prior art.
We disagree with the appellant that by combining Carter and
Elliott the resulting trailer would necessarily have a roof. One skilled
in the art would recognize that Elliott’s teaching of bi-fold doors is for
the purpose of providing access for loading and unloading the trailer
and providing protection from debris falling on the road, which is
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