Appeal No. 99-0230
Application No. 08/396,277
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, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellants’ invention is directed to an arrangement
for enhancing the delivery of a drug aerosol issuing from a
nebulizer into an airstream that is inhaled by the patient
through duct means. An objective of the invention is to
enhance the operation of the system by causing the nebulizer
to generate the aerosol selectively during the inhalation
phase of the patient’s breathing cycle. In the appellants’
system, turbulence is generated in the airstream duct, and its
level is measured by a microphone as an indication of the
level of flow. As manifested in independent apparatus claim
1, the elements of the invention include
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