Appeal No. 96-3964
Application No. 08/225,228
After careful review of the Rossi and Olsen references,
we are in agreement with Appellants' stated position in the
Brief. The 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, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In the
present instance, although Olsen does teach a device with an
elongated recess extending from an edge into a wall portion,
the invention is for use in identifying stolen automobiles.
We fail to see how the Olsen device which is designed for
paper identification tag insertion would have relevance to the
radio frequency tracking system for wafer carriers of Rossi.
None of the problems sought to be overcome by Olsen would be
expected to exist in the wafer carrier system of Rossi. We
are left to speculate why the skilled artisan would employ the
elongated recess feature of Olsen in the recited position in
Rossi. The only reason we can discern is improper hindsight
reconstruction of Appellants' claimed invention. As to the
"sufficiently close" argument articulated by the Examiner, we
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