Appeal No. 96-1659
Application 08/166,931
Ferguson or Watkins. The examiner responds that the artisan
would recognize that “power is derived from
the existing power line thereby eliminating the need for an
independent power supply such as an electric battery” [answer,
page 5].
The examiner’s bald statements fail to establish a
prima facie case for the obviousness of claim 35. As pointed
out by appellant, claim 35 recites a specific relationship
between the master smoke alarm and the slave smoke alarms as
to which has the battery and which does not. The examiner
never addresses this relationship. The examiner observes that
any alarm in Ferguson or Watkins can be the master alarm and
any of the others can be slave alarms [answer, page 5]. It is
this very point, however, which teaches away from the claimed
invention. Since any alarm in the applied prior art can be
the master or the slave, the artisan would make them all
alike. That is, either all the smoke alarms would have a
battery or all the smoke alarms would not have a battery. The
examiner has provided no evidence of obviousness and no
analysis which supports the obviousness of
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