Appeal No. 98-0194 Page 18
Application No. 08/132,940
unit of time to a user energy setting set on Bowers' control
panel 12, and (3) automatically shut down Bowers'
electrosurgical generator when that amount of energy dispensed
equals the user energy setting. In addition, with respect to
claim 13, we believe it would also have been obvious to one of
ordinary skill in the art at the time of the appellant's
invention to set the units of time of the clock to be about a
millisecond in view of Ensslin's teaching of performing the
integration continuously in real time.
The appellant's arguments are unpersuasive for the
following reasons. First, the appellant argues (brief, pp. 12-
13) that Bowers contains "no instruction therein to control
energy" and that Ensslin "does not have a voltage measuring
circuit." As to the appellant's argued deficiencies of each
reference on an individual basis, we note that nonobviousness
cannot be established by attacking the references individually
when the rejection is predicated upon a combination of prior
art disclosures. See In re Merck & Co. Inc., 800 F.2d 1091,
1097, 231 USPQ 375, 380 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Second, the
appellant argues (brief, pp. 14, 21 and 22) that there is no
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