Appeal No. 1999-1064 Page 4
Application No. 08/654,766
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 appellants’ disclosure. See,
for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d
1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1438 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488
U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellants’ invention relates to an ink follower for
an aqueous ball point pen whose function is to prevent the ink
from leaking out when the pen is placed sideways or upside down
and, particularly, when the pen is dropped and the ink receives
an impact. According to the appellants, prior art ink
followers failed in this regard. Four independent claims are
before us, with claims 8 and 12 setting forth the invention in
terms of an ink follower for an aqueous ballpoint pen, and
claims 16 and 20 as an aqueous ballpoint pen having an ink
reservoir. In each of the four independent claims the
invention comprises a “gel-like material” and a “solid piece
introduced into the gel-like material,” but the claims differ
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