Appeal No. 1997-4279
Application No. 08/486,702
In applying the test for obviousness, this panel of the 3
board makes the determination that it would have been obvious
to one having ordinary skill in the art, from a combined
assessment of the applied prior art teachings, to provide the
coating apparatus of the German reference (Fig. 2) with a
feeder to
obtain overlapped sheets on the conveyor. From our 4
perspective, the incentive on the part of one having ordinary
skill in the art for making this modification would have
simply been to obtain the art-recognized benefit of
overlapping sheets to be coated on a conveyor, i.e., the
benefit of, in effect, an uninterrupted paper surface on the
conveyor belt, as a consequence of which no coating can be
3The test for obviousness is what the combined teachings
of references would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in
the art. See In re Young, 927 F.2d 588, 591, 18 USPQ2d 1089,
1091 (Fed. Cir. 1991) and In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208
USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981).
4The Klebanow teaching (Fig. 1; column 4, lines 41
through 44) also clearly instructs those versed in the coating
art of the known feature of dual conveyor belts 15, 24
operated at different speeds to effect separation of
overlapped sheets.
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