Appeal No. 1997-3676
Application 08/237,221
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness, 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, 1439, 5
USPQ2d 1434, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825
(1988).
The method recited by the appellant in independent
claim 49 comprises the steps of introducing a fiber optic
probe until the penetrating end is adjacent the punctum,
surgically entering the tear passages to localize obstruction
of tear flow, coupling the exterior end of the fiber optic
element to a photo- ablative laser selected from a particular
group and emitting laser pulses to cause photodecomposition of
4
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