Appeal No. 97-4252 Page 12
Application No. 08/226,520
disclosure and to back up assertions of its own with
acceptable evidence or reasoning which is inconsistent
with the contested statement. Otherwise, there would be
no need for the applicant to go to the trouble and
expense of supporting his presumptively accurate
disclosure.
In re Marzocchi, 439 F.2d at 224, 169 USPQ at 370.
Thus, the dispositive issue is whether the appellant's
disclosure, considering the level of ordinary skill in the art
as of the date of the appellant's application, would have
enabled a person of such skill to make and use the appellant's
invention without undue experimentation. The threshold step
in resolving this issue as set forth supra is to determine
whether the examiner has met his burden of proof by advancing
acceptable reasoning inconsistent with enablement. This the
examiner has not done. Moreover, it is clear to us that2
2Factors to be considered in determining whether a
disclosure would require undue experimentation include (1) the
quantity of experimentation necessary, (2) the amount of
direction or guidance presented, (3) the presence or absence
of working examples, (4) the nature of the invention, (5) the
state of the prior art, (6) the relative skill of those in the
art,
(7) the predictability or unpredictability of the art, and
(8) the breadth of the claims. See In re Wands, 858 F.2d 731,
737, 8 USPQ2d 1400, 1404 (Fed. Cir. 1988) citing Ex parte
Forman, 230 USPQ 546, 547 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1986).
Page: Previous 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007