Appeal No. 1999-0444
Application No. 08/758,655
pointed out in the above rejection. It would have been a
matter of choice and obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to use any one or a combination of these signals to
actuate the tool of Leutwyler 803 as modified by Ross '860 or
Council '046 or Crawford '642. Again, the advantages pointed
out above would have motivated one of ordinary skill in the
art to make the combination.
In response to appellants' argument that the examiner's
conclusion of obviousness is based upon improper hindsight
reasoning, it must be recognized that any judgment on
obviousness is in a sense necessarily a reconstruction based
upon hindsight reasoning. But so long as it takes into
account only knowledge which was within the level of ordinary
skill at the time the claimed invention was made, and does not
include knowledge gleaned only from the applicant's
disclosure, such a reconstruction is proper. See In re
McLaughlin, 443 F.2d 1392, 1395, 170 USPQ 209, 212 (CCPA
1971). In the present case, we find that all of the knowledge
relied upon by the examiner was gleaned from the applied
references, not from appellants’ disclosure.
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