Appeal No. 97-0746
Application 08/135,883
agree with the examiner’s conclusion that the teachings of
Ferrigan would have made it obvious to replace Plumly’s U-
shaped frame member 12 with “independent wheel frames with
wheel [sic, wheels] attached as claimed to facilitate storage”
(answer, page 4).
In the first place, Plumly expressly discloses in column
3, lines 4-10, that his handle and post unit 42, 44 is
pivotable to a collapsed position over frame 12 for storing
the dolly. Accordingly, there would be no reason to replace
Plumly’s frame 12 with independently pivotable members for
accomplishing a purpose already achieved with the patentee’s
structure. Furthermore, to select Ferrigan’s teaching of
providing independently pivotable frame members, but not
Ferrigan’s teaching of pivoting the frame members about
angularly intersecting axes, and then to combine that selected
teaching with Plumly’s teachings in such a way to pivot the
members about a common axis amounts to a piecemeal
reconstruction of appellant’s claimed invention based on the
impermissible hindsighted benefit of appellant’s own
disclosure. For these reasons we must reverse the 103
rejection of claims 1 through 6 based on the combined
7
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