Appeal 2007-1914
Application 10/378,641
or the background knowledge possessed by a person having ordinary skill in the
art, as support for his conclusion that there existed at the time of the invention an
apparent reason to modify the sleeve nut and grommet of Borst in the manner
claimed. See KSR, 127 S.Ct at 1740-41, 82 USPQ2d at 1396; see also In re Kahn,
441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on
obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere conclusory statements; instead,
there must be some articulated reasoning with some rational underpinning to
support the legal conclusion of obviousness”). As such, we find that the Examiner
has failed to set forth a prima facie case of obviousness, and we cannot sustain this
rejection of claim 90.
Rejection of claims 1, 2, 15, 17, 23, 24, 26-28, 30, 33, 35, 36, 43-45, 47, 54-57, 70,
72, 73, 75, 76, 81, 83-86, and 92 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as anticipated by
Schwartz
Independent claims 1, 23, 33, 43, 70, 81, and 92 all recite at least one sleeve
nut threaded onto a stud shaft. The Examiner took the position that “[s]leeve nuts
come in many different shapes and sizes” and thus the term “sleeve nut” as
claimed does not define anything structurally different from the nut 88 in Schwartz
(Answer 14). The Appellant argues that the Examiner’s interpretation of “sleeve
nut” is overly broad because it ignores the word “sleeve” entirely (Appeal Br. 13).
We agree with the Appellant.
It is clear to us that a sleeve nut, as that term is used in the art (see e.g.,
Borst, col. 2:33-35), means something more than just a plain hex nut. The word
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