Appeal No. 2001-0472 Page 9
Application No. 09/153,951
With regard to this difference, the examiner determined
(answer, pp. 5-6) that
it would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time the invention was made to have
eliminated the cylinder of Sarazin in favor of providing
only one ball in separate troughs of the system in order
to reduce the overall number of parts in the system for
simplicity of design.
We do not agree.
We agree with the appellants' argument (brief, pp. 13-14)
that the claimed subject matter would not have been obvious at
the time the invention was made to a person of ordinary skill
in the art from the teachings of Sarazin. In that regard, we
note that in the rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 before us in
this appeal the examiner has not provided the necessary
evidence to support the examiner's above-noted obviousness
determination. That is, the applied prior art of Sarazin does
not suggest eliminating his cylinder 22 in favor of providing
only one ball in separate troughs of the system. In our view,
the only suggestion for modifying Sarazin in the manner
proposed by the examiner to arrive at the claimed subject
matter stems from hindsight knowledge derived from the
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