Appeal No. 96-0023
Application 07/958,046
Furthermore, we fail to find any reason to modify
Hitchens
to obtain Appellant's invention. The Federal Circuit states
that "[t]he mere fact that the prior art may be modified in
the manner suggested by the Examiner does not make the
modification obvious
unless the prior art suggested the desirability of the
modification." In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23
USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992), citing In re
Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir.
1984).
Furthermore, rejecting patents solely by finding prior art
corollaries for the claimed elements would permit an examiner
to use the claimed invention itself as a blueprint for piecing
together elements in the prior art to defeat the patentability
of the claimed invention. Such an approach would be an
illogical and inappropriate process by which to determine
patentability. In Re Denis Rouffet, 97-1492 (Fed. Cir.
9
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