Appeal No. 1997-1436 Page 5
Application No. 08/419,174
35 U.S.C. § 103. Our reasoning for this determination
follows.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, 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). A prima facie case of
obviousness is established by presenting evidence that would
have led one of ordinary skill in the art to combine the
relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed
invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
With respect to the rejection of claim 13, the examiner
determined (answer, p. 4) that
[i]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in
the art to have provided a Hall Vandis doll with the
function of sound activated recording, as taught by
Koguchi, in order to create an eavesdropping device to
monitor child or other peoples' private word and actions.
The controls disclosed by Hall Vandis can easily be
modified and control of such an additional function for
the same electronic assembly would have been well within
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