Appeal No. 1997-0074
Application No. 08/123,092
Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In
establishing a prima facie case of obviousness, it is
incumbent upon the examiner to provide a reason why one of
ordinary skill in the art would 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, 1052 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825
(1988).
All three of the appellants' independent claims are
directed to a method of manufacturing an article having an
integral handle. Claim 1 is representative, setting forth the
invention as comprising the following steps:
providing a structural substrate that has a handle
hole of sufficient size to provide a space for
gripping a handle that spans the hole,
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