Appeal No. 1997-2014 Application No. 07/959,995 reference disclosure concerning “oat bran muffins”, which the examiner relies upon as support for her obviousness conclusion, quite plainly would not have suggested the here claimed invention. More specifically, the aforementioned disclosure relates to a muffin product having a fat content many times higher than the maximum allowed by independent claims 1 and 8. Moreover, the examiner’s position that it would have been obvious to lower the fat content of this product so as to be within the here claimed range simply is not supported by the requisite teaching/ suggestion and reasonable expectation of success. In re O’Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 903-904, 7 USPQ2d 1673, 1680-1681 (Fed. Cir. 1988). Similarly, the California Prune Board reference contains no teaching or suggestion of a dry premix having the ingredients and proportions defined by appealed independent claim 6. In light of these evidentiary deficiencies, we cannot sustain the examiner’s § 103 rejection of claims 1 through 20 as being unpatentable over the California Prune Board reference. 5Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NextLast modified: November 3, 2007