Appeal No. 1999-1536 Page 7
Application No. 08/938,592
interval of time that coins are being collected in the second receiver [column 5,
lines 4-11].
We do not agree with appellants' assertion (reply brief, page 2) that the examiner's
proposed combination illustrates "impermissible use of hindsight." The test for obviousness is
not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the structure
of the primary reference; nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly suggested in any
one or all of the references. Rather, the test is what the combined teachings of the references
would have suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413,
425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). Indeed, a prima facie case of obviousness is
established where the reference teachings would appear to be sufficient for one of ordinary skill
in the art having those teachings before him to make the proposed combination or modification.
See In re Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013, 1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
From our viewpoint, Black teaches the desirability of providing a diverter or shunting
mechanism in the coin path between the exit of the coin of a particular denomination from the
sorting disc/head and an associated coin-collecting container, for diverting coins away from a
first coin-collecting container toward a second coin-collecting container, when a particular coin
count is reached, in order to give the operator an opportunity to replace the first (full) bag with
another empty bag while coins of that particular denomination are collected in a second bag
without interrupting the sorting function of the apparatus. While we recognize that Ristvedt
does provide an overflow receptacle 174 to collect all residual coins after a predetermined
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