Appeal 2007-0201
Application 10/973,635
The sinker can be cut with a knife at the annular indentations to alter the
weight of the sinker to compensate for changing water conditions, to reduce
the likelihood of an overweight sinker snagging on underwater objects such
as rocks and sunken debris, and to render the sinker useful with different
types of bate, lures and tackle (col. 1, ll. 24-29; col. 2, ll. 45-51).
The Appellant argues that one of ordinary skill in the art would not
have combined Brown’s disclosure of a single sinker with Biss’s disclosure
of a sinker having at least two metal shot attached by a tubular jacket (Br. 7-
13).1 Biss makes his sinker out of steel or other metal shot that, unlike lead,
is nontoxic (col. 2, ll. 6-8; 37-41). Brown teaches that bismuth is a nontoxic
substitute for lead in fishing sinkers (col. 1, ll. 47-49; col. 1, l. 66 – col. 2, l.
1). Hence, Brown would have led one of ordinary skill in the art, through
the use of no more than ordinary creativity, to use bismuth as Biss’s
nontoxic metal. See KSR Int’l. Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1741, 82
USPQ2d 1385, 1396 (2007) (In making an obviousness determination one
“can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ.”).
The Appellant argues that Biss’s teaching that short, compact sinkers
“simply do not allow for any further adjustments to be made in the original
sinker’s weight” (col. 1, ll. 42-44) and thus teaches away from Brown’s
single sinker (Br. 8). Although Biss starts with an elongated, flexible sinker
(col. 1, l. 47), Biss teaches that the sinker can be cut to alter the weight of the
sinker to reduce the likelihood of it snagging, compensate for changing
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Last modified: September 9, 2013