Appeal No. 95-4678
Application 08/097,572
The appellants do not dispute the examiner’s conclusion that
Shine would have suggested providing the Duncan sign with
attachment means of the sort recited in independent claims 1 and
20. Indeed, the combined teachings of Duncan and Shine provide
ample justification for this conclusion.
The appellants do contend, however, that “the [Duncan]-Shine
combination clearly does not teach what is set out in the
appellants’ claims regarding the emergency battery pack housing
defining an enclosure, which houses the electrical components
including the battery pack, all within the enclosure of the exit
sign housing” (main brief, page 10). In this vein, it is argued
that
[i]n attempting to substitute one emergency
lighting system for another as is being done in the
subject rejection, it is improper to ignore the logical
teachings (i.e., mounting a power supply container 35
on the exterior of the exit sign and using a removable
cover 36 to permit access to the components (37, 38) in
the container 35) found in the applied secondary
reference to Shine or to force the Shine teachings into
the primary reference. Such improper modifications can
only be made with use of impermissible hindsight in
view of appellants’ own invention [main brief, pages 11
and 12].
This impermissible hindsight argument is well taken. There
is nothing in the combined teachings of Duncan and Shine which
would have suggested mounting a self-contained emergency power
supply or module of the sort disclosed by Shine within the sign
7
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007