Appeal No. 1999-0285 Page 9
Application No. 08/697,573
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972). Furthermore, the
conclusion that the claimed subject matter is prima facie
obvious must be supported by evidence, as shown by some
objective teaching in the prior art or by knowledge generally
available to one of ordinary skill in the art that would have
led that individual to combine the relevant teachings of the
references to arrive at the claimed invention. See In re
Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir.
1988). Rejections based on § 103 must rest on a factual basis
with these facts being interpreted without hindsight
reconstruction of the invention from the prior art. The
examiner may not, because of doubt that the invention is
patentable, resort to speculation, unfounded assumption or
hindsight reconstruction to supply deficiencies in the factual
basis for the rejection. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011,
1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S.
1057 (1968).
With this as background, we turn to the examiner's
rejection of claim 25 (the only independent claim rejected
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