Appeal No. 98-1204
Application No. 08/609,551
That is, from our perspective, one of ordinary skill in the
art would not have been motivated to modify the Nickerson
spreader body in the manner proposed by the examiner. This
being the case, the teachings of these two references fail to
establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the
subject matter of claim 8, and we will not sustain the
rejection. We also will not sustain the rejection of claims
9-11 and 13-19, which depend from claim 8 and were rejected on
the same grounds.
Claim 12 adds to claim 8 that the spreader bar body is
split into upper and lower members, and that these members
intersect the apertures through their entire length. The
examiner adds Palmer to the basic combination for its teaching
of such an arrangement. Be that as it may, Palmer fails to
alleviate the problem of lack of suggestion to combine
Nickerson and Lloyd in the manner proposed by the examiner,
which rendered the rejection of claim 8 fatally defective.
Thus, the three references applied against claim 12 fail to
meet the threshold of establishing a prima facie case of
obviousness, and we will not sustain the rejection.
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