Appeal No. 2006-2182 Page 5
Application No. 10/670,623
intended use of the Anderson sling. We find persuasive the appellants’ argument
on page 9 of the Brief that there is no motivation from Anderson’s description of
the cord as “flexible” that would have led a person of ordinary skill in the art to
have modified the cord to make it of an elastic material. The purpose of the
suspension sling of Anderson is to hang deer or other game from a tree to facilitate
cleaning and dressing. Anderson, col. 1, lines 15-18. Substitution of an elastic
cord would allow the game to move up and down as the user processes the game
and would make it more difficult to safely dress the game. As such, an elastic cord
would not be an equivalent material to the steel wire, nor would it be suitable for
the intended use of the Anderson sling. Rather, we find a distinct disadvantage to
substituting an elastic cord for the steel wire disclosed in Anderson, such that there
would have been no motivation for one of ordinary skill in the art to have made
such a modification.
Similarly, the examiner’s reasoning that one of ordinary skill in the art at the
time the invention was made would have modified the suspension sling of
Anderson to add a cover as taught in Dalmaso for the purpose of providing shock
absorption to the device misinterprets the teaching of Dalmaso. The examiner
found that the jacket (18) of Dalmaso provided shock absorption to the device to
dissipate the shock forces generated by a rapidly decelerating object. (Answer, p.
4) We disagree and find that the jacket (18) of Dalmaso does not provide shock
absorption for the lanyard. Specifically, Dalmaso teaches that the core (14), made
from a synthetic semi-drawn high tensile load bearing or bulked continuous
filament material, having predetermined tensile yield strength, provides the shock
combine the teachings of Anderson and Dalmaso.
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