Appeal No. 98-0028
Application No. 08/455,912
The opposing viewpoints of the appellant are set forth in
the Brief.
OPINION
The guidance provided by our reviewing court for
evaluating rejections under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is as follows. In
rejections under Section 103, the examiner bears the initial
burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness (see In
re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed.
Cir. 1993)), which is established when the teachings of the
prior art itself would appear to have suggested the claimed
subject matter to one of ordinary skill in the art (see In re
Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir.
1993)). This is not to say, however, that the claimed
invention must expressly be suggested in any one or all of the
references, rather, the test for obviousness is what the
combined teachings of the references would have suggested to
one of ordinary skill in the art (see Cable Electric Products,
Inc. v. Genmark, Inc., 770 F.2d 1015, 1025, 226 USPQ 881, 886-
87 (Fed. Cir. 1985)), considering that a conclusion of
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