Appeal 2006-1966
Application 10/246,506
particular, the Supreme Court emphasized that “the principles laid down in
Graham reaffirmed the ‘functional approach’ of Hotchkiss, 11 How. 248.”
KSR, 127 S.Ct. at 1739, 82 USPQ2d at 1395 (citing Graham v. John Deere
Co., 383 U.S. 1, 12 (1966) (emphasis added)), and reaffirmed principles
based on its precedent that “[t]he combination of familiar elements
according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more
than yield predictable results.” Id. The Court explained:
When a work is available in one field of endeavor,
design incentives and other market forces can
prompt variations of it, either in the same field or a
different one. If a person of ordinary skill can
implement a predictable variation, §103 likely bars
its patentability. For the same reason, if a
technique has been used to improve one device,
and a person of ordinary skill in the art would
recognize that it would improve similar devices in
the same way, using the technique is obvious
unless its actual application is beyond his or her
skill.
Id. at 1740, 82 USPQ2d at 1396. The operative question in this “functional
approach” is thus “whether the improvement is more than the predictable use
of prior art elements according to their established functions.” Id.
ANALYSIS
We agree with the examiner that the combined teachings of
MacKenzie and Schlueter would have rendered the subject matter of the
claims prima facie obvious. In our view, the claimed subject matter is
merely a combination of familiar elements according to known methods and
would likely have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art as yielding
a mere predictable result.
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