Appeal No. 98-1194
Application 08/630,669
choice of well-known features for ball devices.
Further, the use of an elastomeric material would be
for better bounce and water resistance.
With respect to Casey in view of Eiseman, Casey
merely differs from the invention in lacking of an
inflatable bladder and a slit for the insertion of
the bladder. Eiseman clearly discloses such
conventional features for ball constructions. It
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time of appellant's invention to make
the ball of Casey with the conventional features of
an outer casing and an inflatable bladder as
disclosed by Eiseman as also in obvious alternative
design choice in ball constructions notoriously
well-known to those of ordinary [skill] in the ball
construction art. Further, the use of a bladder
would be for the purpose of providing a "second
skin" for holding the air in the ball [answer, pages
4 and 5].
Given the disparate natures of the balls disclosed by
Eiseman and Casey, however, it is apparent that the reference
combinations proposed by the examiner stem only from an
impermissible hindsight reconstruction of the appellant's
invention wherein the examiner has used the claims as a
template to selectively piece together isolated disclosures in
the prior art. Moreover, even if the proposed reference
combinations were made, the resulting balls would still not
meet the limitation in independent claim 1 requiring the
spherically shaped hollow casing to be molded of flexible foam
plastic material. We are therefore constrained to conclude
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