Appeal No. 96-3033
Application 08/139,574
According to the examiner,
Rogers teaches the well known latch mechanism
comprising a doorjamb restraint 21 protruding
from the doorjamb and a plate latch 20
pivotably mounted 22 to the doorjamb restraint
to capture the elongate central plate 19
therein. It would have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art to modify the
restraint of Reed to additionally provide a
latch plate as taught by Rogers to enhance the
security of the latch as desired. [final
rejection, page 3]
We cannot support the examiner’s position. In In re Fritch,
972 F.2d 1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1784 (Fed. Cir. 1992), our
current court of review stated:
It is impermissible to use the claimed
invention as an instruction manual or
“template” to piece together the teachings of
the prior art so that the claimed invention is
rendered obvious. This court has previously
stated that “[o]ne cannot use hindsight
reconstruction to pick and choose among
isolated disclosures in the prior art to
deprecate the claimed invention” [citations
omitted].
The situation here before us appears to be of the type
presented in Fritch. We will concede to the examiner that a case
can be made that there exists a correspondence between certain
elements of Reed and Rogers. It is our view, however, that the
motivation for casting about to find such correspondence comes
from first reviewing appellant’s disclosure rather than from
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