Appeal 2006-3057
Application 10/426,905
1 Manufacturing Company, 400 F.3d 910, 915, 73 USPQ2d 1929, 1933, (Fed.
2 Cir. 2005), the Court, in dealing with similar language, stated:
3 The district court's analysis of the prosecution history disclaimer is
4 sound. Pease has an impact protection component made of multiple
5 parts: a soft inner tube and a protective outer shell, as shown below in
6 Figures 2 and 3. Both of these parts are involved in impact protection;
7 together, they form the impact protection component. By amending
8 their claims to include the limitation “single unitary part” and arguing
9 that this amendment “distinguishes the present invention from the
10 multi-component impact protection assembly disclosed by Pease[,]”
11 the patentees gave up coverage of multipart impact protection
12 components. For this reason, we affirm the district court's
13 interpretation of this term as meaning “that the impact protection
14 component is a single part, which is complete by itself without
15 additional pieces.” [italics added].
16
17 From our construction of the claims, we find that the language of the
18 claims excludes multiple parts connected together. Accordingly, we do not
19 agree with the Examiner (Final Rejection 2) that "when attached, the panel is
20 unitary and one piece." Nor do we agree with the Examiner (id.) that bottom
21 member 26 of Rashid meets the claimed bent portion or crease because the
22 bottom of one panel that is bolted to a second panel is not a one-piece panel
23 that is bent between the inner panel portion and the outer panel portion, as
24 recited in claim 1, and similarly recited in independent claims 8 and 31.
25 We turn next to the rejection of claim 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
26 being unpatentable over Rashid in view of Salmonowicz. We will not
27 sustain the rejection of claim 17 because Salmonowicz fails to make up for
28 the basic deficiencies of Rashid.
29
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