Appeal No. 1999-0604
Application 08/575,477
diameters, but rather that a smaller-diameter wire may be
added to the margin of the tray to rigidify the structure.
Secondly, it may well be that it would have been an
obvious matter of design to reduce the diameter of all the
wires of the Simon tray, or at least all of the longitudinal
wires, if one wished, for example, to reduce the weight and
cost at the expense of load-carrying capacity. However, we do
not consider that it would have been an obvious matter to
change the diameter of only some of the longitudinal wires
relative to the others, and there is no teaching in Simon to
that effect.
"The mere fact that the prior art may be modified in the
manner suggested by the Examiner does not make the
modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification." In re Fritch, 972 F.2d
1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In the
present case, the claimed subject matter may, in hindsight,
appear to be an obvious modification of the Simon apparatus,
but in the absence of any suggestion of such modification in
the prior art, such a hindsight view would seem to be based on
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