Appeal No. 1996-2958
Application No. 08/150,053
restriction area utilizing fixed timer cycles. In our view,
these traffic control techniques are so opposite in approach
that any motivation to combine them must have resulted from an
improper attempt to reconstruct Appellants’ invention in
hindsight.
In summary, we are left to speculate why one of ordinary
skill would have found it obvious to modify the applied prior
art to make the combination suggested by the Examiner. The
only reason we can discern is improper hindsight
reconstruction of Appellants’ claimed invention. In order for
us to sustain the Examiner’s rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103,
we would need to resort to speculation or unfounded
assumptions or rationales to supply deficiencies in the
factual basis of the rejection before us. In re Warner, 379
F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied,
389 U.S. 1057 (1968), reh’g denied,
390 U.S. 1000 (1968). Since we are of the view that the prior
art applied by the Examiner does not support the rejection, we
do not sustain the rejection of independent claims 1 and 12,
nor of dependent claims 2 through 7, 11, and 13 through 17.
Therefore, the Examiner’s decision rejecting claims 1 through
10
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007