Appeal No. 96-2299 Application No. 08/072,753 The rejection is explained in the Examiner's Answer. The viewpoints of the appellants are set forth in the Brief. OPINION We have evaluated this rejection on the basis of the following guidelines provided by our reviewing court: The examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness (see In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993)), which is established when the teachings of the prior art itself would appear to have suggested the claimed subject matter to one of ordinary skill in the art (see In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26 USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993)). This is not to say, however, that the claimed invention must expressly be suggested in any one or all of the references, rather, the test for obviousness is what the combined teachings of the references would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art (see Cable Electric Products, Inc. v. Genmark, Inc., 770 F.2d 1015, 1025, 3Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007