Appeal 2007-0816
Application 11/095,887
49 USPQ2d 1464, 1467 (Fed. Cir. 1999). We agree with Appellant that, by
interpreting “seat belt” to encompass the hand and wrist restraints in
Woody’s device, the Examiner has given the term “seat belt” an
unreasonably broad interpretation.
Woody describes a seat-shaped prisoner restraining device 1, which
can be placed in a car (Woody, Figure 1). To each side of the seat portion of
the device “an upstanding column is provided with each such column having
a top surface designed to support the palms of the hands of the prisoner
while each forearm of the prisoner engages a rear surface of a respective
column” (id. at col. 1, ll. 57-61; see also Figure 3).
Wrist restraints 40 and hand restraints 45, the elements cited by the
Examiner as being seat belts, are mounted to the columns, and are used to
restrain a prisoner seated within the device (id. at col. 3, ll. 24-41 and 52-
58). The restraints bind the prisoner’s hands to the tops of the columns, and
wrists to the backs of the columns (id., Figures 4-6). The restraints can be
remotely activated using a control box 21 connected by wires 27 to the
restraints (id. at col. 2, line 67 through col. 3, line 8).
We do not see, and the Examiner does not point to, where Woody
discloses that the restraints are made of flexible material. Nor does the
Examiner explain why the restraints are inherently made of flexible material.
Because Woody does not disclose the wrist and hand restraints as
being of flexible material, the restraints do not meet the Examiner’s own
definition of “seat belt” as being “a strip of flexible material on a chair,
stool, or bench to be sat on” (Answer 6 (emphasis added)). That is, because
they are not disclosed as being of flexible material, one skilled in the art
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