Appeal No. 95-4852
Application 08/224,090
of conveying the insulation material in one direction in the
housing toward the exit opening formed as required by claim 20
and hence claim 21" (brief, page 5, emphasis in the original) is
not convincing. To begin with, such argument is not commensurate
with the actual scope of claim 21 which does not exclude the
first means from conveying the insulation material in more than
one direction. Moreover, non-obviousness cannot be established
by attacking references individually where the rejection is based
upon the teachings of a combination of references. In re Merck &
Co., 800 F.2d 1091, 1097, 231 USPQ 375, 380 (Fed. Cir. 1986).
The test for obviousness is not whether the features of a
secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure
of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention
must be expressly suggested in any one or all of the references.
Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references
would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. In
re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981).
Here, even if claim 21 did require the first means to convey the
insulation material in but a single direction toward the exit
opening, Woten’s “first means” or auger 18 does the same and the
provision of suitably arranged spikes thereon as suggested by
Morris would not alter this feature.
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