Appeal No. 97-1836
Application No. 08/324,818
art would have been led to modify a prior art reference or to
combine reference teachings to arrive at the claimed
invention. See Ex parte Clapp, 227 USPQ 972, 973 (BPAI 1985).
To this end, the requisite motivation must stem from some
teaching, suggestion or inference in the prior art as a whole
or from the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary
skill in the art and not from the appellants’ disclosure.
See, for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837
F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1052 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellants’ invention provides a two part wound
dressing that can be applied in one step and allows redressing
of the wound without disturbing it. As pointed out in the
opening pages of the specification, this solves a number of
problems that were present in the prior art systems, wherein
an essentially non-adherent contact component was installed
upon the wound in a first step, to be followed by the
installation of an absorbent material in a second step. The
Sims patent, which the examiner has applied as the primary
reference, is cited on page 3 of the appellants’ specification
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