Appeal No. 2003-1638
Application 09/511,741
unpatentable over Bowers taken in view of Gallagher.1,2
We refer to the examiner’s answer and to appellants’ brief and reply brief for a complete
exposition of the opposing positions advanced on appeal.
It is well settled that in order to establish a prima facie case of obviousness under
§ 103(a), the examiner must show that some objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the
applied prior art taken as a whole and/or knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in
this art would have led that person to the claimed invention as a whole, including each and every
limitation of the claims arranged as required by the claims, without recourse to the teachings in
appellants’ disclosure. See generally, In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453,
1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573,
37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Laskowski, 871 F.2d 115, 10 USPQ2d 1397 (Fed. Cir. 1989);
In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074-76, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
The dispositive issue in this appeal as framed by the examiner and appellants is whether
one of ordinary skill in this art would have drawn from the teachings of Bowers the reasonable
inference from the disclosure that deployment door 14a molded as one piece with cover 40a,
wherein deployment door 14a is shown as a single molded piece with second cover 44a in
Bowers FIG. 5, and disclosed to have a connection location 130, and a rupturable portion or tear
seam 46a to releasably disconnect first cover part 42a, and wherein first and second covers parts
42a and 44a are flexible to some extent (col. 5, lines 41-50), that the flexible tether 16b attached
to deployment door 14b as shown in Bowers FIG. 6 is an integrally molded unit (col. 5, line 56,
to col. 6, line 5; see also col. 6, lines 6-20). It is well settled that a reference stands for all of the
specific teachings thereof as well as the inferences one of ordinary skill in this art would have
reasonably been expected to draw therefrom, see In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1264-65, 23
USPQ2d 1780, 1782-83 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Preda, 401 F.2d 825, 826, 159 USPQ 342, 344
1 Appealed claims 1 through 3, 6, 7, 9, 11 and 17 are all of the claims in the application. See the
appendix to the brief.
2 The examiner states in the answer (pages 3-4) that the rejections are set forth in the Office
action of July 24, 2002 (Paper No. 13).
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