Appeal No. 1999-0032 Page 4
Application No. 08/525,407
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, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488
U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellant’s invention is directed to a blower unit for
heating a stream of air, such as might be used to inflate a
thermal blanket in the operating room of a hospital. Among the
advantages of the invention are reduced noise sensed by those
around the unit owing to the orientation of the inlet and
outlet and the use of an elbow to direct the airstream at the
outlet, and efficient heating of the air by placing the fan
drive motor in the airstream (specification, page 4). As
manifested in independent claim 20, the inventive blower unit
comprises a housing having an inlet at one end and an outlet at
the other end, a support to position the housing over a support
surface so that the inlet “is substantially oriented toward the
support surface,” a blower “positioned between the inlet and
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