Appeal No. 98-1532
Application No. 08/438,533
enough to permit the sprinkler head to “freely penetrate” it
when operating, as is recited in claim 1.
Insofar as the issue of suggestion to combine is
concerned, the advantage of Block upon which the examiner
based the suggestion to combine the references is its domed
upper surface, which allows water to run off from the
sprinkler. To incorporate this feature into Leite would
require that the flat Leite disk be modified into a domed
configuration. Essentially, the result of that would be the
Block device, which is where we began this exercise, for we
can see no reason to retain the flat bottom surface of the
Leite disk in view of the fact that its function of keeping
grass from growing close to the sprinkler is accomplished by
the domed top of Block. We therefore fail to perceive any
teaching, suggestion or incentive in either reference which
would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to modify
Leite in the manner proposed by the examiner.
For the reasons expressed above, it is our opinion that
the combined teachings of the two applied references fail to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the
subject matter of independent claim 1. It therefore follows
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