Appeal No. 97-2456
Application 08/424,064
color coded measuring marks located adjacent to and extending
along the length of the measuring edge as broadly recited in this
claim.
The examiner’s conclusion that it would have been obvious to
one of ordinary skill in the art in view of the disclosure of
Glaese to modify Jones’ color coded indicia by providing
individual measuring marks each having a different color than all
of the remaining measuring marks in its group and the same color
as the corresponding measuring mark in other groups (see page 3
in the final rejection), thereby arriving at the subject matter
recited in claim 1, is well founded. 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). Glaese’s teaching that each
increment of a measuring group be colored differently from the
remaining increments in the group and that the corresponding
-7-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007