Appeal No. 2006-2839
Application No. 10/699,229
BACKGROUND
The appellants’ invention relates to a piston-cylinder unit (specification,
page 1).
Claim 1 is representative of the invention, and is reproduced as follows:
A piston-cylinder unit comprising:
a cylindrical pressure tube having an end with an end face surrounding a
central opening, said cylindrical pressure tube being formed at said end to form an
end wall, said end face facing radially inward to define said central opening;
a piston rod extending through said central opening and forming a ring-
shaped gap between said piston rod and said end face; and
a heat-shrink sleeve surrounding said pressure tube and extending axially
into said ring-shaped gap, enclosing said end face.
The prior art references of record relied upon by the examiner in rejecting
the appealed claims are:
Freitag et al. (Freitag) 4,281,884 August 4, 1981
Kaufmann et al. 5,791,445 August 11, 1998
(Kaufmann)
Claims 1, 3-7 and 131 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
unpatentable over Freitag in view of Kaufmann.
Rather than reiterate the conflicting viewpoints advanced by the examiner
and the appellants regarding the above-noted rejection, we make reference to the
answer (mailed March 2, 2006) for the examiner's complete reasoning in support of
1 The examiner additionally lists claim 2. However, we find this to be a typographical error as
claim 2 has been cancelled; see page two of the Final Office action mailed January 6, 2005.
2
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