Appeal 2007-0481
Application 10/654,049
“[W]hen a patent ‘simply arranges old elements with each performing
the same function it had been known to perform’ and yields no more than
one would expect from such an arrangement, the combination is obvious.”
KSR Int’l v. Teleflex, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727, 1740, 82 USPQ2d 1385, 1395-96
(2007) (quoting Sakraida v. AG Pro, Inc., 425 U.S. 273, 282 (1976)).
When a work is available in one form 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. KSR Int’l v. Teleflex, Inc., 127 S. Ct. 1727 at 1740,
82 USPQ2d at 1396.
ANALYSIS
Appellant argues several points in support of its principal contention
that the combination of Davis and Naboulsi does not disclose a pair of
spaced apart carbon fibers strips disposed on a communication device (as
recited in independent claims 1 and 9).
Appellant argues that the Examiner admits Davis does not teach
spaced apart carbon fibers disposed on the housing of a wireless telephone
(Reply Br. 4: 29-31). Davis does teach a mobile telephone device, however,
and Davis’s device teaches (capacitive) sensors responsive to macro-
manipulation disposed on either side of the wireless telephone’s housing
(Finding of Fact No. 5). The Examiner concedes that Davis does not teach
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