Appeal No. 99-0201
Application No. 08/696,283
425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In establishing a prima
facie case of obviousness, 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 appellant’s invention is directed to improvements in
the rollers which operate upon the cams that cause brake shoes
to move into contact with brake drums. The problem to which
the appellant has directed his inventive efforts is the
elimination of the fracturing of the corners of these rollers
due to misalignment. As manifested in independent claim 1,
the structure that accomplishes this is defined as a
3
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