Appeal No. 96-0674
Application 08/533,287
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). Rejections based
on
§ 103 must rest on a factual basis with these facts being
interpreted without hindsight reconstruction of the invention
from the prior art. The examiner may not, because of doubt
that the invention is patentable, resort to speculation,
unfounded assumption or hindsight reconstruction to supply
deficiencies in the factual basis for the rejection. See In
re Warner, 379 F.2d
1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389
U.S. 1057 (1968). Our reviewing court has repeatedly
cautioned against employing hindsight by using the appellant's
disclosure as a blueprint to reconstruct the claimed invention
from the isolated teachings of the prior art. See, e.g.,
Grain Processing Corp. v. American Maize-Products Co., 840
F.2d 902, 907, 5 USPQ2d 1788, 1792 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
With this as background, we turn to the rejection of the
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