Appeal No. 1999-1039
Application No. 08/876,762
in the art. See, for example, In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,
425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In establishing a prima
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, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
The appellant’s invention pertains to three-dimensional
structures that provide building shape modification for
edifices in order to break up and camouflage the expanse and
form of large roofed buildings, and which can be deployed or
altered rapidly, on short notice. Independent claim 1 is
directed to “[a] three-dimensional shape modification
camouflage structure for camouflaging large, roofed edifices
3
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007