Appeal 2007-1330
Application 10/451,725
drive of the type disclosed by Bonfiglioli for each of the bevel gear sets 17,
15 and 18, 16 of Bruestle (Answer 5).
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.
KSR Int’l. Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 127 S.Ct. 1727, 1740, 82 USPQ2d 1385,
1396 (2007). We must also keep in mind that
a patent composed of several elements is not
proved obvious merely by demonstrating that each
of its elements was, independently, known in the
prior art. Although common sense directs one to
look with care at a patent application that claims as
innovation the combination of two known devices
according to their established functions, it can be
important to identify a reason that would have
prompted a person of ordinary skill in the relevant
field to combine the elements in the way the
claimed new invention does.
Id. at 1741, 82 USPQ2d at 1396.
In this instance, while the planetary gear angle drive disclosed by
Bonfiglioli appears to serve the same basic function of the bevel gear sets of
Bruestle, namely, transmission of rotation in a direction normal to the axis of
transmitted rotation, the Examiner has not explained, and it is not apparent,
how one of ordinary skill in the art could modify Bruestle to permit such a
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