Appeal 2007-1541
Application 10/334,695
art ready for the improvement.” Id. The Court explained, “[o]ften, it will be
necessary for a court to look to interrelated teachings of multiple patents; the
effects of demands known to the design community or present in the
marketplace; and the background knowledge possessed by a person having
ordinary skill in the art, all in order to determine whether there was an
apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion claimed by
the patent at issue.” Id. at 1740-41, 82 USPQ2d at 1396. The Court noted
that “[t]o facilitate review, this analysis should be made explicit.” Id., citing
In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977, 988, 78 USPQ2d 1329, 1336 (Fed. Cir. 2006)
(“[R]ejections on obviousness grounds cannot be sustained by mere
conclusory statements; instead, there must be some articulated reasoning
with some rational underpinning to support the legal conclusion of
obviousness”). However, “the analysis need not seek out precise teachings
directed to the specific subject matter of the challenged claim, for a court
can take account of the inferences and creative steps that a person of
ordinary skill in the art would employ.” Id. at 1741, 82 USPQ2d at 1396.
The Federal Circuit recently concluded that it would have been
obvious to combine (1) a mechanical device for actuating a phonograph to
play back sounds associated with a letter in a word on a puzzle piece with
(2) an electronic, processor-driven device capable of playing the sound
associated with a first letter of a word in a book. Leapfrog Ent., Inc. v.
Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157, 1161, 82 USPQ2d 1687, 1690-91 (Fed.
Cir. 2007) (“[a]ccommodating a prior art mechanical device that
accomplishes [a desired] goal to modern electronics would have been
reasonably obvious to one of ordinary skill in designing children’s learning
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