Appeal No. 95-1215
Application No. 07/750,777
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over the combined teachings of
Oneto, Schafer and Dawson. We will not sustain this
rejection. While the examiner has pointed to the various
individual components of the claimed cleansing agent described
in the prior art references, the examiner has not established
on this record why one of ordinary skill in the art would have
been led to combined the individual components. Specifically,
the record is devoid of any evidence or sound scientific
reasoning as to why one of ordinary skill in the art would
have been led to add a water swellable organic polymer useful
for “soil release and antistatic finishing, for reducing the
deposition of soil during washing and for hydrophilizing
textiles” (see column 7, lines
49-55, of Schafer referred to by the examiner) in Oneto’s
single liquid phase detergent composition useful as a foam
bath product. The examiner’s proposed combination, in our
opinion, is based purely on impermissible hindsight gained by
first having read appellant’s disclosure, and not on what the
teachings of the prior art references themselves would have
fairly suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art. See In
re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1016, 154 USPQ 173, 177 (CCPA
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