Appeal No. 1998-1711 Page 14
Application No. 08/506,387
but also the inferences which one skilled in the art would reasonably be expected to draw
therefrom. In re Preda, 401 F.2d 825, 826, 159 USPQ 342, 344 (CCPA 1968).
In our opinion, the teachings of Penkwitz, without the benefit of hindsight provided by
the appellants' disclosure, would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art providing the
engine coolant expansion tank in juxtaposition with the reservoir or recipient 100 of Eustache in
order to take advantage of the heat stored in the expansion tank to heat the windshield washing
liquid to prevent the washing liquid from freezing in the winter and to enhance the cleaning
effect in other seasons so as to arrive at the invention of claim 4. While we have considered
the appellants' argument (brief, page 21) that "adapting the rectangular tanks shown in
[Penkwitz] to the toroidal module in [Eustache] would itself require patentable ingenuity," we
do not find this argument persuasive.
Initially, we observe that all of the features of the secondary reference need not be bodily
incorporated into the primary reference (see In re Keller, 642 F.2d at 425, 208 USPQ at 881 and that
the artisan is not compelled to blindly follow the teaching of one prior art reference over the other
without the exercise of independent judgment (Lear Siegler, Inc. v. Aeroquip Corp., 733 F.2d 881,
889, 221 USPQ 1025, 1032 (Fed. Cir. 1984)).
The modification to Eustache to provide the engine coolant expansion tank in
juxtaposition with the windshield washing liquid reservoir 100, having been suggested by
Penkwitz, from our perspective, would have involved only routine design skill within the
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