Ex Parte Carroll

Patent Trial and Appeal Board

May 15, 2015

13112148 (P.T.A.B. May. 15, 2015)

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.
13/112,148 05/20/2011 Christian A. Carroll 248060/GEC-322 6922
87853 7590 05/15/2015
Dority & Manning, PA and General Electric Company
Post Office Box 1449
Greenville, SC 29602
EXAMINER
HTAY, AYE SU MON
ART UNIT PAPER NUMBER
3745
MAIL DATE DELIVERY MODE
05/15/2015 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 CHRISTIAN A. CARROLL
____________

Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148
1, 2

Technology Center 3700
____________

Before JOSEPH A. FISCHETTI, MICHAEL C. ASTORINO, and
PHILIP J. HOFFMANN, Administrative Patent Judges.

ASTORINO, Administrative Patent Judge.

DECISION ON APPEAL

STATEMENT OF THE CASE
The Appellant appeals under 35 U.S.C. § 134 from the Examiner’s
decision rejecting claims 1–20. We have jurisdiction over the appeal under
35 U.S.C. § 6(b). We affirm.
Claimed Subject Matter
Claims 1, 14, and 20 are the independent claims on appeal. Claim 1,
reproduced below, is illustrative of the subject matter on appeal.

1
The Appeal Brief lacks pages numbers. We designate page 1 as the page
that includes the heading “BRIEF ON APPEAL” and number the
remaining pages in the Appeal Brief consecutively therefrom.
2
According to the Appellant, General Electric Company is the real party in
interest. Appeal Br. 1
Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148

2
1. A rotor blade assembly for a wind turbine, the rotor blade
assembly comprising:
a rotor blade having exterior surfaces defining a pressure
side, a suction side, a leading edge, and a trailing edge
extending in a generally span-wise direction between a tip and a
root; and,
a flap extending in the generally span-wise direction
from the root towards the tip, the flap comprising an inner
surface and an outer surface, the entire inner surface
conformingly mounted to at least one of the pressure side, the
suction side, or the trailing edge, the outer surface and at least
one of the pressure side or the suction side defining a generally
continuous aerodynamic surface.

Rejections
I. Claims 1, 2, 4, 11–15, 17, 19, and 20 are rejected under 35
U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable over Driver (US 2007/0025858 A1, pub.
Feb. 1, 2007), Mosiewicz (US 4,618,313, iss. Oct. 21, 1986), and Moser (US
7,566,203 B2, iss. July 28, 2009).
II. Claims 5–7 and 18 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Driver, Mosiewicz, Moser, and Engineering Expedient.
III. Claims 3, 10, and 16 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as
unpatentable over Driver, Mosiewicz, Moser, and Parsania (US
2009/0016891 A1, pub. Jan. 15, 2009).
IV. Claim 8 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Driver, Mosiewicz, Moser, Engineering Expedient, and Parsania.
V. Claim 9 is rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as unpatentable
over Driver, Mosiewicz, Moser, and Herr (US 7,458,777 B2, iss. Dec. 2,
2008).

Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148

3
ANALYSIS
We have considered the Appellant’s arguments in the Appeal Brief
and the Reply Brief, and have determined that they are unpersuasive of
Examiner error.
The Appellant argues that any attempt to modify Driver’s invention
based on the teachings of Moser would destroy Driver’s intended purpose,
which is to have a flap (cap) that is flexible to conform to multiple rotor
blades. See Appeal Br. 6–7.
At the outset, we note that the Appellant’s identification of the
intended purpose of Driver’s invention is inaccurate as it is too narrow. The
intended purpose of Driver’s invention is to reduce noise while producing
wind energy by use of a trailing end piece, e.g., trailing end cap as depicted
in Figure 3. See Driver, Title, paras. 1–3, 10. Further, Driver’s intended
purpose includes a trailing end cap that is “configured to be mounted on
more than one differently sized and/or shaped blades 24.” Driver, para. 31
(emphasis added); see Appeal Br. 6 (quoting Driver, para. 31).
Driver discloses that an example of its cap, which is configured to be
mounted, may include a design of its cap with sufficient flexibility to allow
the body of the cap to conform to “a variety of differently sized and/or
shaped trailing edge portions 46 of [rotor] blades 2[4].” Driver, para. 31. In
other words, Driver’s cap conforming to a trailing edge portion of a rotor
blade is only an example of a type of mounting that Driver’s disclosure
considers. Another example of a cap, which is “configured to be mounted
on more than one differently sized and/or shaped blades 24,” includes an
embodiment where cap 50 is mounted to the original trailing edge portion 46
of blade 24 and a space exits between cap 50 and the original trailing edge
Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148

4
portion 46 of blade 24. Id. Later, foam may be injected into the space to
support sides 56, 58 of cap 50. See id.
As for the Examiner’s modification of Driver, the Examiner finds that
Driver does not teach, but that Moser does teach, that an entire inner surface
of a cap conformingly mounted to at least one of the pressure side, the
suction side, or the trailing edge, the outer surface of a rotor blade as
required by the appealed claims. Final Act. 5, 6–7. The Examiner
concludes that it would have been obvious to one having ordinary skill in the
art to further modify
3
Driver’s cap “by constructing the entire inner surface
of the flap to be conformingly mounted to the pressure side, the suction side,
or the trailing edge of the rotor blade [as] taught by Moser for the purpose of
securely mounting the flap to the rotor blade.” Final Act. 6. The
Examiner’s conclusion articulates adequate reasoning with rational
underpinning as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would have combined
the teachings of these references to result in the claimed subject matter. See
In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988 (Fed. Cir. 2006) (“[R]ejections on
obviousness grounds [require] some articulated reasoning with some rational
underpinning to support the legal conclusion of obviousness”), cited with
approval in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 418 (2007).
Regarding the Examiner’s conclusion, the Appellant contends that
Driver, Mosiewicz, and Moser lack “any disclosure or suggestion for
modifying Driver as the Examiner suggests.” Reply Br. 3. This contention
is unpersuasive; as the Supreme Court held, “[t]he obviousness analysis

3
The Examiner modifies Driver’s rotor assembly by extending cap 50 from
the root of the rotor blade towards the tip of the rotor blade in the generally
span-wise direction, as taught by Mosiewicz. See Final Act. 5–6.
Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148

5
cannot be confined by a formalistic conception of the words teaching,
suggestion, and motivation, or by overemphasis on the importance of
published articles and the explicit content of issued patents.” KSR at 419.
Returning to the Appellant’s argument that the Examiner’s proffered
modification of Driver in view of Moser would destroy Driver’s intended
purpose, the Appellant asserts that the result of Examiner’s proffered
modification is that cap 50’s inner surface would be required to have a
contour that conforms to only a singular rotor blade to which the cap was to
be affixed. See Appeal Br. 6. In other words, the Appellant argues, “if the
Driver cap were modified to have an entire inner surface conformingly
mounted to a rotor blade surface, the ability of the Driver cap to conform to
multiple differently sized and/or shaped rotor blades would be lost.” Appeal
Br. 7 (emphases omitted). The Appellant’s argument is unpersuasive.
The Examiner’s proffered modification of Driver’s cap, as modified
by Moser, results in a cap where its “entire inner surface conformingly
mount[s] to at least one of the pressure side, the suction side, or the trailing
edge” of a rotor blade as required by the claims. This result is specific to the
ability of Driver’s cap to be configured to conform to the original trailing
edge of a rotor blade as required by the claims. However, this result does
not preclude Driver’s cap to be configured to be mounted on more than one
differently sized and/or shaped blades.
For example, if Driver’s cap is mounted to a rotor blade, but the entire
inner surface does not conformingly mount to the trailing edge of a rotor
blade, Driver’s intended purpose is still met because Driver’s cap is mounted
to the rotor blade to reduce wind turbine noise. Furthermore, if Driver’s cap
would benefit from further support because a space exits between cap 50 and
Appeal 2013-006506
Application 13/112,148

6
the original trailing edge portion 46 of blade 24, foam may be injected into
the space to support sides 56, 58 of cap 50. See Driver, para. 31.
For similar reasons as discussed above, the Appellant argues that
Driver teaches away from the Examiner’s proffered modification “by
requiring that the cap have the characteristics as discussed above that
facilitate the flexib[i]lity to conform to multiple rotor blades.” Appeal Br. 7.
The Appellant’s argument is unpersuasive because the Examiner’s proffered
modification does not forgo the possibility of Driver’s cap maintaining its
design to be configured to mount to differently sized and/or shaped rotor
blades. See supra.
Thus, Rejection I, i.e., the rejection of claims 1, 2, 4, 11–15, 17, 19,
and 20 as unpatentable over Driver, Mosiewicz, and Moser, is sustained.
Further, the Appellant does not provide separate argument for Rejections II–
V. Thus, for the same reasons as discussed above, we sustain Rejections II–
V.

DECISION
We AFFIRM the rejections of claims 1–20.
No time period for taking any subsequent action in connection with
this appeal may be extended under 37 C.F.R. § 1.136(a). See 37 C.F.R.
§ 1.136(a)(1)(iv).

AFFIRMED
Klh