Appeal No. 98-1456 Page 9
Application No. 08/294,958
that this determination of the examiner has not been supported
by any evidence that would have led an artisan to arrive at
the claimed invention.
In our view, the only suggestion for modifying Sckolnik
and Allum in the manner proposed by the examiner to meet the
above-noted limitations stems from hindsight knowledge derived
from the appellant's own disclosure. The use of such
hindsight knowledge to support an obviousness rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103 is, of course, impermissible. See, for
example, W. L. Gore and Associates, Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721
F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert.
denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984). It follows that we cannot
sustain the examiner's rejections of claims 1, 3, 6 and 8
through 11. 4
4We have also reviewed the Dustin reference additionally
applied in the rejection of claim 8 but find nothing therein
which makes up for the deficiency discussed above.
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