Appeal No. 2006-1848
Application No. 10/352,360
have been obvious. Rather, we agree with the examiner’s articulation
of his finding of obviousness.
The advantage of a trailer having a central deeper portion in the
floor is to provide additional volume for cargo. Such a configuration
for trailers is old in the art, as demonstrated by Lutkenhouse. Further,
Lutkenhouse is directed to the same problem as Carter and Elliott, i.e.,
overcoming the disadvantages of conventional flatbed trailers.
Lutkenhouse’s solution is an expandable trailer van in which the roof
and side walls are formed of a flexible material and are adapted to
conform to the cargo being transported. (Lutkenhouse, column 1,
lines 36-44 and Figure 1).
The trailer field is a mature field of art and the nature of the
advance made by the appellant is suggested by the combined
teachings of the art taken from the same field and directed to solving
the same problem. As such, we find that 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
maximize the cargo volume of the trailer by using the drop deck
trailer configuration of Lutkenhouse, in place of a flatbed trailer, as
shown in Carter and Elliott, because all of the references relate to
overcoming disadvantages with conventional flatbed trailers. It would
naturally follow that the size of the doors covering the drop deck
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