Appeal No. 1996-2195
Application 08/120,911
The Federal Circuit states that "[t]he mere fact
that the prior art may be modified in the manner suggested by
the Examiner does not make the modification obvious unless the
prior art suggested the desirability of the modification." In
re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84
n.14 (Fed. Cir. 1992), citing In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902,
221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984). In addition, the
Federal Circuit reasons in Para-Ordnance, 73 F.3d at 1088-89,
37 USPQ2d at 1239-40, that for the determination of
obviousness, the court
must answer whether one of ordinary skill in the art who sets
out to solve the problem and who had before him in his
workshop the prior art, would have been reasonably expected to
use the solution that is claimed by the Appellants.
Upon our careful review of Watkins, we find that
Watkins is concerned with various data management actions such
that when taken ensure data coherency. Watkins teaches that
there is a problem in maintaining data consistency between
the I/O cache and the central cache. See column 1, lines 32
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