Appeal No. 1998-1296
Application 08/199,304
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).
The appellants’ invention deals with the initiation of
propellants by the use of microwave energy. As manifested in
claim 1, the invention comprises a combustion chamber, a
charge of propellant in the chamber and means for igniting the
propellant by microwave heating, with the means for igniting
the propellant in turn comprising a source of microwave
energy, a microwave transparent window in a wall of the
chamber, means for applying microwaves from the source, and
4
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