Appeal No. 95-3109
Application 08/043,113
Where the teachings of the prior art require a selective
combination of features in order to render obvious a claimed
invention, there must be some reason for the combination other
than hindsight gleaned from the invention disclosure,
Interconnect Planning Corp. v. Feil, 774 F.2d 1132, 1143, 227
USPQ 543, 551 (Fed. Cir. 1985). In the fact situation before us,
we are unable to agree with the examiner that one of ordinary
skill in the art would have arrived at the claimed subject matter
based on the teachings of Yanagishima.
In light of the foregoing, we cannot support the examiner’s
rejection of claims 1-4, 6, 11-15, 18 and 19 as being
unpatentable over Yanagishima.
We have also carefully reviewed the Smith reference
additionally relied upon by the examiner in rejecting claims 5
and 17, and Skrzycki reference additionally relied upon by the
examiner in rejecting claims 7, 16 and 20, but find nothing
therein that makes up for the deficiencies of Yanagishima
discussed above. Therefore, we also cannot support the
examiner’s rejections of these dependent claims.
The decision of the examiner is reversed.
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