Appeal No. 97-0925 Page 11 Application No. 08/328,159 Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 177 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1057 (1968). The examiner in the rejection of claims 1, 5, 9 and 13 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 determined (final rejection, pp. 3-4) that it would have been obvious to one skilled in the art to modify Rowsey's canopy by forming the canopy into a cylindrical shape. For the reasons set forth by the appellant (brief, pp. 11- 17), we conclude that claims 1, 5, 9 and 13 are not obvious over Rowsey. It is our view, after a careful review of the teachings of Rowsey, that in searching for an incentive for modifying the shape of the planetarium/umbrella of Rowsey, the examiner has impermissibly drawn from the appellant's own teachings and fallen victim to what our reviewing Court has called "the insidious effect of a hindsight syndrome wherein that which only the inventor taught is used against its teacher." W. L. Gore & Assoc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 313 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984). Since we have determined that the subject matter of independent claims 1 and 9 would not have been suggested by the teachings of the applied prior art, it follows that we will not sustain thePage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007