Appeal No. 2002-0377 Page 7
Application No. 09/123,908
experimentation. In this case, the examiner has merely stated that the disclosure is
inadequate. This is clearly not sufficient to meet the examiner's initial burden to
establish a reasonable basis to question the enablement provided for the claimed
invention.
For the reasons set forth above, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1
to 25 under 35 U.S.C. § 112 is reversed.
The rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 1 to 11 and 15 to 22 under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103.
The basis for the examiner's rejection of claims 1 to 11 and 15 to 22 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 is set forth on pages 2-3 of the final rejection. In essence the examiner
concluded that it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a
person of ordinary skill in the art to have modified Perry's system to have a
decentralized control of the local conveyors in view of the teachings of Head.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
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