Appeal No. 98-1531 Page 3
Application No. 08/371,511
In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981).
In establishing a prima facie case of obviousness under 35
U.S.C.
§ 103, it is incumbent upon the examiner to provide a reason
why one of ordinary skill in the 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 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 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 appellant's 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 objective of the appellant’s invention is to provide a
seat for vehicles such as aircraft which reduces the head
excursion of the occupant in high impact crashes. As
manifested in claim 1, the sole independent claim, the
invention comprises a seat assembly having a frame, a seat back
mounted to the frame, a seatpan, means for mounting the seatpan
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