Appeal No. 99-0209
Application No. 08/643,048
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 dispositive issue in this case is whether it would
have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to
modify the Amos gas turbine structure by replacing the
disclosed fuel spray pegs (78) located in the secondary air
inlet passage (68) with the fuel/air atomizing spray bars (31)
disclosed by Bayer in the context of providing fuel to the
afterburner of a jet engine. It is our opinion that it would
not have been obvious to do so, and therefore we will not
sustain the examiner’s rejection. Our reasons for arriving at
this conclusion follow.
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