Appeal No. 97-0615
Application 08/359,664
being slidable into a housing (defined by walls 52,
52, 53, 54, 10) for cutting in order to protect the
operator (see lines 22-43 of column 1). It would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to have modified Clark by making the workpiece
holder (tray 23 with apertures) movable from a
position outside a housing to a position inside the
housing, as taught by Alfandari, in order to shield
the operator from possible contact with the cutting
elements, while maintaining the easy workpiece
loading. Clark's punches could extend thru the
housing from above, since Alfandari teaches a tool
(23) that extend through the housing.
Like appellant (brief, pages 5-8), we are of the opinion
that the examiner’s above position is based on impermissible
hindsight gleaned from appellant’s own disclosure and not from
any fair teaching or suggestion found in the applied prior art
references themselves. In this regard, we consider that the
examiner has used appellant’s own disclosure and the claimed
invention itself as a blueprint for piecing together unrelated
elements from disparate references in the prior art so as to
defeat patentability of the system defined in appellant’s
independent claims 1 and 18 on appeal.
Absent the disclosure of the present application, it is
our opinion that one of ordinary skill in the art would not
have been motivated to modify the printing plate registering
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