Appeal No. 2006-3181
Application No. 10/253,442
would not have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art the
invention as recited in claims 16-19. Accordingly, we reverse.
We consider first the rejection of claims 12-15 and 20
under 35 U.S.C. § 102(e) as being anticipated by Cox.
Anticipation is established only when a single prior art
reference discloses, expressly or under the principles of
inherency, each and every element of a claimed invention as well
as disclosing structure which is capable of performing the
recited functional limitations. RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital
Data Systems, Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed.
Cir. 1984); W.L. Gore and Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721
F.2d 1540, 1554, 220 USPQ 303, 313 (Fed. Cir. 1983).
With respect to the appealed independent claims 12 and 14,
the Examiner attempts to read the various limitations on the
disclosure of Cox. In particular, the Examiner (Answer, pages 3
and 4) points to the illustrations in Figures 2 and 3 of Cox as
well as the disclosure at column 3, lines 52-57 of Cox.
Appellants’ arguments in response assert that the Examiner
has not shown how each of the claimed features is present in the
disclosure of Cox so as to establish a case of anticipation.
4
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: September 9, 2013