Appeal No. 2003-1332 Page 9
Application No. 09/797,143
In our view, the teachings of the applied prior art contain no suggestion, teaching
or motivation for a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time the invention was made
to have made the poppet valve of Gu's fuel injector from the materials suggested and
taught by either Danis or Kloske. The poppet valves taught by both Danis and Kloske
are for use as either an inlet valve or an outlet valve of an internal combustion engine.
As such, there is no teaching or suggestion therein to apply the materials taught by
Danis and Kloske to be used in the poppet valve of a fuel injector. Without some
teaching in the applied prior art that the same material would be useful in both a poppet
valve of a fuel injector and the inlet valve or an outlet valve of an internal combustion
engine, we must conclude that the only suggestion for modifying Gu to arrive at the
claimed invention as set forth in the rejections under appeal stems from hindsight
knowledge derived from the appellants' own disclosure. The use of such hindsight
knowledge to support an obviousness rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is, of course,
impermissible. See, for example, W. L. Gore and Assocs., Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721
F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851
(1984).
Additionally, it is our opinion that even if it would have been obvious at the time
the invention was made to a person of ordinary skill in the art to have made the poppet
valve of Gu from the materials suggested and taught by either Danis or Kloske that
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