Appeal No. 96-1882
Application No. 08/214,013
§ 103, it is incumbent upon the examiner to provide a reason why
one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to modify a
prior art reference or to combine reference teachings to arrive
at the claimed invention. See Ex parte Clapp, 227 USPQ 972, 973
(Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1985). To this end, the requisite
motivation must stem from some teaching, suggestion or inference
in the prior art as a whole or from the knowledge generally
available to one of ordinary skill in the art and not from the
appellant's disclosure. See, for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v.
Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1052
(Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
The claim defines in detail the structure of the appellant’s
portable toilet seat, including a body having a centrally located
aperture, first and second spaced inner support walls disposed
concentrically about the aperture and defining an unobstructed
receiving groove therebetween to accommodate the upper rim of a
bucket, and first and second sets of radial support members
extending, respectively, from the edge of the aperture to the
first inner support wall, and from the second inner support wall
to the outer edge of the body.
Cocu discloses a toilet seat made of solid wood. It is
provided on its underside with an annular groove for receiving
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