Appeal No. 1997-3141
Application No. 08/327,347
set forth a very specific interrelationship of the various
line controllers. The Examiner has provided no indication as
to how and where the skilled artisan might have found it
obvious to modify the teachings of Imai to arrive at the
particular assembly line controller interaction of the claimed
invention. In our view, the Examiner’s attempt to dismiss the
specifics of the claim language by broadly characterizing the
claimed system as a “decentralized” system falls well short of
satisfying the Examiner’s burden of establishing a prima facie
case of obviousness. The mere fact that the prior art may be
modified in the manner suggested by the Examiner does not make
the modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification.
In re Fritch, 972 F. 2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23 USPQ2d 1780,
1783-84 n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
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