Appeal No. 97-3752 Page 6
Application No. 08/293,322
that the invention is patentable, resort to speculation,
unfounded assumption or hindsight reconstruction to supply
deficiencies in the factual basis for the rejection. See In
re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 177 (CCPA 1967),
cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1057 (1968).
Townsend discloses an apparatus for removing the fat and
the skin from a ham. As shown in Figures 1 and 2, the
apparatus includes a feed roll 14 provided with grooves 15 and
teeth 16, a pressure shoe 18, a skinning blade 20 and a
fatting attachment having a fatting blade 21. As shown in
Figure 1, the fatting blade 21 is slanted from one side of the
apparatus to the other side of the apparatus. In addition, as
shown in dotted lines in Figure 2, it is desirable to have the
fatting blade 21 nearly contact the skinning blade 20.
Townsend teaches (column 2, lines 5-11) that (1) in addition
to skinning hams, it is quite often desirable to "fat" them
(i.e., remove fat from the ham), (2) the fatting of ham is
usually performed either is some other machine or by hand, and
(3) the fatting attachment permits fatting the ham
simultaneously with the skinning operation.
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