Appeal No. 98-1455 Page 5 Application No. 08/625,936 examiner. As a consequence of our review, we make the determinations which follow. The anticipation issues We sustain the rejection of claims 16 and 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 102(b) as being anticipated by De Rose. Initially we note that anticipation by a prior art reference does not require either the inventive concept of the claimed subject matter or the recognition of inherent properties that may be possessed by the prior art reference. See Verdegaal Bros. Inc. v. Union Oil Co., 814 F.2d 628, 633, 2 USPQ2d 1051, 1054 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 484 U.S. 827 (1987). A prior art reference anticipates the subject of a claim when the reference discloses every feature of the claimed invention, either explicitly or inherently (see Hazani v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 126 F.3d 1473, 1477, 44 USPQ2d 1358, 1361 (Fed. Cir. 1997) and RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital Data Systems, Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984)); however, the law of anticipation does not require that the reference teach what the appellants are claiming, butPage: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007