Appeal No. 2007-1188
Application 10/621,131
3. The Applicant does not purport to be the first to invent a crossover
mirror assembly, and there are preexisting crossover mirror assemblies for school
buses. (Specification, ¶ 11).
4. There are even preexisting government regulations, i.e., Federal
Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 111, concerning the forward, leftward, and
rightward view that a crossover mirror on a new school bus must provide, which is
based on the eye ellipses of a 25th percentile hypothetical female driver.
(Specification, ¶ 11).
5. According to the Applicant, while in actual use, prior art crossover
mirrors must be manually adjusted without remote control, rightward or leftward,
based on the size of the bus driver. (Specification, ¶ 11).
6. The Applicant’s disclosure states that manual adjustment of crossover
mirrors is a time consuming process that typically requires two people, one inside
the bus and one adjusting the mirror, and that if the process is not performed
properly, blind spots may occur in front of or alongside the vehicle. (Specification
¶ 12). We take the statement as representing that at the time of the Applicant’s
invention there was a known and preexisting problem, not yet solved, in that
crossover mirrors had to be adjusted manually and the process was time
consuming.2
7. Claim 1 is the only independent claim on appeal. It reads as follows:
1. A crossover mirror assembly for mounting on an exterior
front surface of a vehicle, the vehicle having a cab region, the
crossover mirror assembly meeting a particular forward, rightward
2 The Applicant does not claim to be the first in recognizing either that prior art
crossover mirrors had to be manually adjusted or that manual adjustment of
crossover mirrors was time consuming.
3
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