Ex Parte Boland et al

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

Feb 23, 2018

14045303 (P.T.A.B. Feb. 23, 2018)

United States Patent and Trademark Office
UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
Address: COMMISSIONER FOR PATENTS
P.O.Box 1450
Alexandria, Virginia 22313-1450
www.uspto.gov
APPLICATION NO. FILING DATE FIRST NAMED INVENTOR ATTORNEY DOCKET NO. CONFIRMATION NO.
14/045,303 10/03/2013 Xavier Boland 710290-00081 7685
59582 7590 02/26/2018
DTrKTNSON WRIGHT PT T C EXAMINER
2600 WEST BIG BEAVER ROAD GRAHAM, GARY K
SUITE 300
TROY, MI 48084-3312 ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3727
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
02/26/2018 PAPER
Please find below and/or attached an Office communication concerning this application or proceeding.
The time period for reply, if any, is set in the attached communication.
PTOL-90A (Rev. 04/07)
UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE
BEFORE THE PATENT TRIAL AND APPEAL BOARD
Ex parte XAVIER BOLAND, PIERRE HENIN, and ERIC COOS
Appeal 2017-0066091
Application 14/045,3032
Technology Center 3700
Before MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, KENNETH G. SCHOPFER, and
SHEILA F. McSHANE, Administrative Patent Judges.
SCHOPFER, Administrative Patent Judge.
DECISION ON APPEAL
This is an appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the rejection of
claims 1, 3, and 4. We have jurisdiction under 35 U.S.C. § 6(b).
We AFFIRM.
1 Our decision references the Appeal Brief (“Appeal Br.,” filed Oct. 4, 2016)
and Reply Brief (“Reply Br.,” filed Mar. 13, 2017), and the Examiner’s
Answer (“Ans.,” mailed Jan. 12, 2017) and Final Office Action (“Final
Act.,” mailed May 31, 2016).
2 According to Appellants, the real party in interest is Federal-Mogul S.A.
Appeal Br. 3.
Appeal 2017-006609
Application 14/045,303
BACKGROUND
According to Appellants, “[t]he present invention relates generally to
a windscreen wiper device.” Sub. Spec. 12.
INDEPENDENT CLAIM
Claim 1 is the only independent claim on appeal and recites:
1. A yokeless windscreen wiper device, comprising:
a flexible carrier of spring steel which is curved in a
lengthwise direction of said carrier;
a wiper blade of flexible material supported by said
carrier and biased by said carrier into a curved shape in a
lengthwise direction of said wiper blade;
a connecting device secured to said carrier at a location
spaced from longitudinally opposite ends of said carrier;
a generally U-shaped joint part pivotally connected to
said connecting device for relative pivotal movement about a
pivot axis transverse to said lengthwise direction of said wiper
blade;
said joint part including a top wall and two side walls and
an open bottom and opposite longitudinal ends each spaced
from said pivot axis and being slidable into connection with a
wiper arm;
said top wall of said joint part including at least one
resilient tongue for releasably engaging a hole of the wiper arm
for releasably connecting said joint part with the wiper arm
when received in the hole; and
at least one stop surface on said connecting device that is
engageable with a corresponding stop feature of the wiper arm
to limit reverse sliding movement and disconnection of the joint
part from the wiper arm until said joint part is tilted upwardly
relative to said connecting device to expose a path for allowing
passage of the stop feature on the wiper arm past said at least
one stop surface.
Appeal Br. 11.
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Application 14/045,303
REJECTIONS3
1. The Examiner rejects claims 1 and 3 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Jarasson4 in view of Weber.5
2. The Examiner rejects claim 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Jarasson in view of Weber and De Block.6
DISCUSSION
Obviousness
xaminer finds that Jarasson discloses a wiper device including a wiper
blade with a connecting device joined to a wiper arm via a U-shaped joint
part as claimed. Final Act. 4 (citing Jarasson Fig. 1). The Examiner
acknowledges that Jarasson does not disclose the “particular construction of
the wiper blade, in particular, wherein the connecting device of the wiper
blade is connected to a flexible wiper strip via curved carrier elements.” Id.
The Examiner finds that Weber discloses a wiper device including a
connecting device that “directly supports a rubber strip (18) via a pair of
curved spring metal carrier elements (167) received in grooves of the rubber
strip (fig. 4).” Id. at 5. The Examiner concludes:
It would have been obvious to one of skill in the art to
provide the wiper blade of Jarasson as the connecting device
directly supporting a rubber strip via curved carrier elements, as
clearly suggested by Weber, to provide simple wiper
construction. Directly connecting the connecting device of
wiper blades to the rubber strip via curved carrier elements
(yokeless construction) is well established.
3 The Examiner has withdrawn the rejection of claim 5 under 35 U.S.C.
§112 because that claim has been cancelled. See Ans. 5.
4 Jarasson, FR 2788027 Al, pub. July 7, 2000.
5 Weber et al., WO 02/053421 Al, pub. July 11, 2002.
6 De Block et al., US 6,944,905 B2, iss. Sept. 20, 2005.
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Application 14/045,303
Id.
As discussed below, we are not persuaded of reversible error in the
Examiner’s findings or conclusion by Appellants’ arguments.
Appellants first argue that Jarasson fails to teach a yokeless device,
e.g., a device that does not include yokes “pivotally connected to each other,
but wherein the wiper blade is biased by the carrier element, as a result. Of
which it exhibits specific curvature.” Appeal Br. 6—8; Sub. Spec. 12.
Appellants assert that Jarasson depicts only a portion of a wiper blade device
including a portion of a wiper blade frame and that one of ordinary skill in
the art would understand that Jarasson is disclosing a portion of a standard or
typical wiper blade assembly including yokes. Id. at 7. In support,
Appellants assert that Jarasson specifically discloses that what is shown is
“an element of the frame of the wiper blade,” thus indicating “we are seeing
only a portion of an otherwise complete frame that has been omitted” and
that there other undepicted elements. Id. Appellants also contend that
Jarasson’s device includes unnumbered keyhole slots, which one would
understand “to be a standard way of interconnecting several bridges and/or
links [i.e. yokes] . . . typically assemble[d] to make up a standard frame-
type wiper blade support that ultimately receives and supports the rubber
wiper element.” Id. Appellants further assert that these other elements are
omitted because they do not impact this particular connection, but they “are
nonetheless implied and important to a complete and fully functional
windshield wiper assembly.” Id.
We are not persuaded by this argument, and we agree with the
Examiner’s response thereto. See Ans. 5. In particular, we agree that
Jarasson makes no mention of any other interconnected parts, such as yokes,
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Application 14/045,303
that are required to make a complete wiper device. Id. Thus, on its face,
Jarasson appears to be silent regarding whether the device includes one or
more yokes. Further, Appellants point to no specific structure in Jarasson
that requires the addition of a yoke to the device or any claimed structure
that differentiates a yokeless system from the expressly disclosed system in
Jarasson. We also agree with the Examiner that “Jarasson does not discuss
any particular manner of connecting the . . . device with the actual wiping
rubber or wiping strip.” Ans. 5. To this extent, the rejection relies on
Weber’s teachings to fill in the gaps, in which case the resulting device
would not include yokes.
Further, to the extent Appellants point to the unnumbered keyhole
slots in Jarasson’s device, we are not persuaded. As noted by Appellants,
Jarasson is silent regarding the function of those slots, and Appellants can
only speculate that those slots are designed to retain interconnecting parts,
such as yokes. However, it appears that Weber also uses a wiper blade
retainer 50 with keyhole slots for engaging a linking pin on the connecting
element 26 for wiper support element 16. See Weber Abstract. In
particular, because Jarasson and Weber both show slots located in a similar
position relative to the blade connector’s length, and Weber’s windscreen
wiper device is yokeless, there is no reason to believe that Jarasson’s
windscreen wiper device cannot function as a yokeless device. Thus, it is
not clear that the presence of keyhole slots indicates that Jarasson’s device
must use yokes as suggested by Appellants.
Second, Appellants argue that the combination “is improper and
unsupported by the references.” Appeal Br. 8. In support, Appellants assert
that “the Final Office Action is silent as to how one of ordinary skill in the
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Application 14/045,303
art would go about making such a combination, let alone in a manner that
would arrive at a functional windshield wiper assembly and without
destroying the teachings of the references.” Id. Appellants further indicate
that Jarasson does not include a “structure that would allow for the
connection that the Final Office Action appears to be relying on” and the
Action is silent regarding what features from Weber would be incorporated
into Jarasson. Id. at 8—9. Thus, Appellants assert that the rejection “is
guided by improper hindsight reconstruction using [Appellants’] disclosure
. . . and leaving out critical adverse teachings and inferences of the prior art
that would clear[ly] teach against the proposed combination.” Id. at 9.
We also are not persuaded of reversible error by this argument. In
response to Appellants’ arguments, the Examiner indicates that Jarasson’s
device “could be modified to directly engage with a curved flexible spring
carrier element in like manner suggested by Weber” and because “Jarasson
has ascribed no particular function or structural relationship to the ends of
the connecting device,” that modifying Jarasson’s device “to directly support
carrier strips, as clearly suggested by Weber,” would not destroy Jarasson’s
device. Ans. 6. We find that the rejection and the Answer provide sufficient
support for the combination proposed by the Examiner.
In particular, we note that “[t]he test for obviousness is not whether
the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the
structure of the primary reference .... Rather, the test is what the combined
teachings of [those] references would have suggested to those of ordinary
skill in the art.” In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981); see also In
re Sneed, 710 F.2d 1544, 1550 (Fed. Cir. 1983) (“[I]t is not necessary that
the inventions of the references be physically combinable to render obvious
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Application 14/045,303
the invention under review.”); In re Nievelt, 482 F.2d 965, 968 (CCPA
1973) (“Combining the teachings of references does not involve an ability to
combine their specific structures.”). Here, the Examiner has established that
it was known in the art to have a “connecting device directly supporting a
rubber strip via curved carrier elements, as clearly suggested by Weber.”
Final Act. 5. We note that Appellants do not contest that the Examiner’s
proposed reason for the combination is lacking or that the references
together do not teach some element of the claim. Additionally, we are not
persuaded that Jarasson’s and Weber’s devices are so different that one of
ordinary skill would not have found it obvious to combine the teachings of
the references as proposed, i.e., we find that one of ordinary skill in the art
would have recognized the differences in the art and had a reasonable
expectation of success in combining the references as proposed to achieve
the claimed invention. See Brown & Williamson Tobacco Corp. v. Philip
Morris, Inc., 229 F.3d 1120, 1124 (Fed. Cir. 2000).
Finally, regarding Appellants’ improper hindsight argument, we
disagree. We are not persuaded that the rejection relies on any knowledge
gleaned only from Appellants’ disclosure. In re McLaughlin, 443 F.2d
1392, 1395, (CCPA 1971).
Based on the foregoing, we are not persuaded of reversible error with
respect to the rejection of claim 1. Accordingly, we sustain the rejection of
claim 1. We also sustain the rejections of claims 3 and 4, which are not
argued separately.
CONCLUSION
We AFFIRM the rejections of claims 1, 3, and 4 for the reasons
discussed.
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No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a)(l)(iv).
AFFIRMED
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