Appeal No. 1998-2001
Application No. 08/408,688
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, 1052,
5 USPQ2d 1434, 1052 (Fed. Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 488 U.S.
825 (1988).
The appellant’s invention relates to fluid treatment by
means of magnetic devices, for the purpose of suppressing
undesirable effects of scale and hard water. All of the
independent claims recite first, second and third magnets of
particular configurations and having specific relationships to
one another, to a base member upon which they are mounted and
to a spacer positioned on the base member. It is the
examiner’s position that the subject matter recited in these
claims would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art in view of the patent to Curtis.
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