Appeal No. 1999-1535 Page 6
Application No. 08/752,220
The obviousness issue
We will not sustain the rejection of claims 19 through 36
under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner
bears the initial burden of presenting a prima facie case of
obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28
USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of
obviousness is established by presenting evidence that would
have led one of ordinary skill in the art 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) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013,
1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
All the claims under appeal require at least one surface
area to comprise
3(...continued)
rejection of claims 29 and 30 under 35 U.S.C. § 103, infra, we
will assume that the dependency of claim 29 has been changed
from claim 29 to claim 25 and the dependency of claim 30 has
been changed from claim 11 to claim 29.
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