Appeal No. 2001-0401 Page 5
Application No. 09/019,451
respective positions articulated by the appellant and the
examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the
determinations which follow.
When it is necessary to select elements of various
teachings in order to form the claimed invention, we ascertain
whether there is any suggestion or motivation in the prior art
to make the selection made by the appellant. Obviousness
cannot be established by combining the teachings of the prior
art to produce the claimed invention, absent some teaching,
suggestion or incentive supporting the combination. The
extent to which such suggestion must be explicit in, or may be
fairly inferred from, the references, is decided on the facts
of each case, in light of the prior art and its relationship
to the appellant's invention. It is impermissible, however,
simply to engage in a hindsight reconstruction of the claimed
invention, using the appellant's structure as a template and
selecting elements from references to fill the gaps. The
3(...continued)
single bracket 142 mounted to the first storage compartment
60).
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