Appeal 2007-0550
Application 10.763,714
by Inoue. It is apparent that Attinger's hollow shaft 7 is supported for
rotation within transmission housing 5, though Attinger does not specify the
details of such support arrangement. A person of ordinary skill in the art,
being "a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton" (KSR Int’l., 127
S.Ct. at 1742, 82 USPQ2d at 1397), would have looked to the known
techniques, such as bearings, for rotatably supporting a shaft within a
housing and would have found it obvious to mount Attinger's hollow shaft 7,
which in turn supports hollow shaft 9 and wheel-set shaft 3, for rotation
within transmission housing 5. A person of ordinary skill in the art would
not have found such modification of Attinger uniquely challenging or
beyond his or her skill. Rather, the modification strikes us as simply a
predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions.
The rejection of representative claim 8, and claims 15 and 17 standing or
falling therewith, is sustained.
Turning finally to the rejection of claims 11, 12, 18 and 22 as
unpatentable over Attinger in view of Seki, Appellants do not argue these
claims separately. Therefore, in accordance with 37 C.F.R.
§ 41.37(c)(1)(vii), we select claim 11 as the representative claim to decide
the appeal of this rejection, with claims 12, 18 and 22 standing or falling
therewith. We note, at the outset, that claim 11 does not require that the
housing actually be mounted to a suspension arm; rather, claim 11 simply
recites that "said housing is mountable to a suspension arm" (emphasis
ours). We find nothing in Attinger, and Appellants have not pointed to
anything, that would render transmission housing 5 incapable of being
mounted to a suspension arm. Appellants thus fail to persuade us that
Attinger does not meet the limitation at issue.
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