Appeal 2007-2618
Application 10/713,178
these respects as disclosed by Onodera and by Messer Griesheim, and that
shields to protect the user are known for hand-held electric soldering tools as
disclosed by Ungar, would have reasonably modified a hand-held laser
welding assembly, such as that shown by Onodera, with a circular laser
reflection shield around the body or the nozzle of the assembly in the
reasonable expectation of protecting the user. One of ordinary skill in this
art would have recognized from these teachings that such a laser reflection
shield need not extend beyond the nozzle of the assembly to provide at least
partial protection to the user, which is all that the limitations of claim 1
require as we interpreted this claim above.
Considering now claim 15, which requires clamping a laser reflection
shield plate coupled thereto to any part of any hand-held laser welding wand,
wherein the shield plate and clamp are selected from a plurality of such
parts, we determine one of ordinary skill in this art would have found in
Onodera and Messer Griesheim the teachings that laser reflection shields can
be selected from a variety of prepared shields which are suitable for a
particular purpose, with Onodera disclosing the advantages of a variety of
suitable shields. In this respect, Onodera would have suggested to this
person that the laser reflective shields can be removably attached, and
discloses a number of attachment methods. Thus, this person would have
reasonably used known methods to attach the removable shields to the
circular body of Onodera’s hand-held laser welding assembly. We notice
that one of ordinary skill in this art would have been aware of the
well-known use of clamping means to attach an object to a circular device.
Thus, attaching a laser reflective shield, selected from a number of such
shields by any clamping means selected from a number of such means to a
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