Appeal No. 1997-3279 Page 8
Application No. 08/240,702
We begin by noting the following principles from In re
Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir.
1993).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. Section 103, the
examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a
prima facie case of obviousness. In re Oetiker, 977
F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992).... "A prima facie case of obviousness is
established when the teachings from the prior art
itself would appear to have suggested the claimed
subject matter to a person of ordinary skill in the
art." In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 782, 26 USPQ2d
1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993) (quoting In re Rinehart,
531 F.2d 1048, 1051, 189 USPQ 143, 147 (CCPA 1976)).
If the examiner fails to establish a prima facie
case, the rejection is improper and will be
overturned. In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5
USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
With these principles in mind, we consider the examiner's
rejection and the appellants' argument.
Admitting that in Suzuki "[i]t is not known what the
ratio of the stator/rotor magnetic elements may be ...,"
(Examiner's Answer at 5), the examiner draws the following
conclusion.
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill
in the art to employ a rotor and stator magnetic
component ratio greater than 75% and less than 100%
because this is known in the art as shown by Doemen.
Furthermore, as this is known, no inventive step is
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