Appeal No. 2005-2108 Page 7
Application No. 10/360,982
not been supported by any evidence that would have led an artisan to have modified
Curnutt so as to arrive at the claimed invention.
In our view, the only suggestion for modifying Curnutt in the manner proposed by
the examiner to meet the above-noted limitation 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).
For the reasons set forth above, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1
to 8 and 10 to 12 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.4
4We have also reviewed the references to Neff and Ivers additionally applied in
the rejection of claims 3, 5 to 7 and 10 to 12 but find nothing therein which makes up for
the deficiencies of Curnutt discussed above.
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007