Appeal No. 2006-1711
Application No. 10/805,935
We appreciate that Williams’ zipper 14c must terminate just above the
zippers 14a, 14b, in order to accommodate the flap for passage of the shoulder
straps 52 through the enclosure back panel 28, but Williams does not attribute any
significance to the portion of the back panel height over which the zippers 14a, 14b
extend and thus does not teach away from the modification proposed by the
examiner, as urged by the appellant on page 11 of the brief. The relative
proportions of the height of the back panel over which each of the zipper 14c and
the zipper pair 14a, 14b extends would have been selected by one of ordinary skill
in the art on the basis of the desired overall height1 of the backpack and enclosure
and the desired distribution of the backpack and its weight along the height of the
wearer and, as such, would have been an obvious design consideration within the
skill of the art. The rejection of claims 1-24 as being unpatentable over Williams is
thus sustained.
The rejection of claims 10 and 20 as being unpatentable over Williams in
view of May is not sustained. The examiner’s rejection relies on a determination
that the golf bag of May would have provided suggestion to modify the Williams
enclosure so that the zipper 14c extends substantially halfway along the back
panel, while still beginning on a separate panel and terminating on the back panel
(final rejection, p. 4). The structure and manner of use of May’s golf bag, which is
not designed to accommodate passage of shoulder straps from a backpack
therethrough, for example, are so vastly different from those of Williams’
1 Backpacks used by hikers and campers carrying lots of gear, for example, typically are designed to extend well
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013