Appeal No. 97-0126
Application No. 08/314,749
Cir. 1984). These showings by the Examiner are an essential
part
of complying with the burden of presenting a prima facie case
of
obviousness. Note In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24
USPQ2d
1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992).
With respect to apparatus claims 1-3, the Examiner seeks
to modify the lens arrangement of Yamanishi by suggesting the
obviousness of staggering the disclosed lens array in the
lengthwise direction. In the Examiner’s view, it would be a
matter of obvious design choice to do so since Appellant has
not disclosed any purpose for such staggered configuration.
In response, Appellant (Reply Brief, page 2) challenges
this basis for the Examiner’s obvious design choice conclusion
by referring to pages 1 and 6 of the specification which
describes how the claimed staggered lens array assembly with
optically stitched outputs enables the copying of extra wide
documents. In addition, Appellant contends that Yamanishi
discloses only a conventional single lens array arrangement
with staggered rows of optical fibers and offers no
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