Appeal No. 96-2022
Application No. 08/132,943
obviousness. That is, the examiner’s analysis, if left
unrebutted, would be sufficient to support a rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103. The burden is, therefore, upon appellants to
come forward with evidence or arguments which persuasively
rebut the examiner’s prima facie case of obviousness.
Appellants have presented several substantive arguments in
response to the examiner’s rejection. Therefore, we consider
obviousness based upon the totality of the evidence and the
relative persuasiveness of the arguments.
With respect to the teachings of Masuda, appellants
argue that “Masuda does not disclose theoretically sufficient
topological structures to represent non-manifold geometric
models or solid model construction of data inputted in the
form of three orthographic views” [brief, page 6]. With
respect to the former point, there is no recitation in claim 6
limiting the invention to non-manifold geometric models. With
respect to the latter point, we agree with the examiner that
appellants’ own description of the prior art that it was
“known to provide systems where structural data in the form of
three orthographic views...are converted to shape data in the
solid model form” [specification, page 1] is sufficient to
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