Appeal No. 1997-3993 Page 8
Application No. 08/462,561
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).
We have reviewed all the prior art applied by the
examiner in the above-noted rejections of claims 8 through 10.
It is our determination that such prior art is not suggestive
of the claimed invention. That is, the applied prior art
would not have made it obvious at the time the invention was
made to a person having ordinary skill in the art to arrive at
the claimed invention. Specially, the applied prior art does
not teach or suggest "a closed water-containing vessel" heated
by a liquid bath as set forth in claim 10 (the only
independent claim on appeal).
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