Court Opinion

ID: 9446217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:49:19.037109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:34.273045
License: Public Domain

RICH, Judge
(concurring).
In spite of the apparent showing of the affidavits that appellant has acquired a certain degree of technical wisdom about how to improve abrasive belt backup wheel performance, I feel obliged to concur in the affirmance of the rejection of the claims.
As the affidavits, claims and arguments all show, appellant seeks a patent on a backup device or wheel characterized by a diagonally serrated peripheral surface comprising lands and grooves in which the lands have steeply pitched leading faces and more gradually sloped trailing faces. The apparent limitations of the claims do little to narrow them to less than this broad concept and it is, unfortunately for appellant, fully disclosed by McVey if we assume his wheel runs in the direction in which it was apparently intended to run.
While the McVey specification would seem to indicate that the patentee thought he would get an increased rate of cut by using the square sides of his bars (the equivalent of lands) rather than the sides which are so shaped as to meet the appealed claims, he also teaches that there are many other factors which affect rate of cut including land spacing and flexibility in particular. Optimum results in this art apparently depend on a nice balancing of several factors. Moreover, appellant’s own tests show that rate of cut is a relative matter and that even his wheels which have an over all *952performance superior to “Ross Type” wheels have a lower initial rate of cut.
Whatever refinements of design and attendant advantages appellant may have discovered, I fail to see how the appealed claims point them out in such a way as clearly to distinguish anything which can be regarded as patentable over the cited prior art.