Appeal No. 96-1604
Application 08/272,906
it is incumbent upon the examiner to provide a reason why one of
ordinary skill in the art would have been led to modify a prior
art reference or to combine reference teachings to arrive at the
claimed invention. See Ex parte Clapp, 227 USPQ 972, 973 (Bd.
Pat. App. & Int. 1985). To this end, the requisite motivation
must stem from some teaching, suggestion or inference in the
prior art as a whole or from the knowledge generally available to
one of ordinary skill in the art and not from appellant's
disclosure. See, for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley
Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1051, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1438 (Fed. Cir. 1988),
cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
It is our opinion that nothing in the teachings of the
applied prior art or the knowledge generally available to one of
ordinary skill in the art would have led such person of ordinary
skill in the art to modify the fiberboard hogshead of Sproull to
include the H-shaped connector of Hancock or the downwardly (or
upwardly) extending skirt portions for the end closures of Sherk.
In particular, although Hancock does disclose a removable
H-shaped connector for connecting panels of a container, it is
not apparent that such a connection would provide the necessary
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