Appeal No. 1999-1785
Application No. 08/512,656
internal member and said seal lip contacts said
external member.
The examiner determined that the bearing assembly of Totten
lacks a seal body seating against an internal member and a
seal lip contacting an external member and concluded that:
[i]t would have been obvious to one of ordinary
skill in the art at the time the invention was made
to have the lip portion contact the external member
and the body portion on the internal member as this
would have been an obvious variant to one of
ordinary skill in the art.
We do not agree. Essentially, it is the examiner’s position
that one of ordinary skill in the art would have found it
prima facie obvious to modify the Totten device without
evidence or prior art in support thereof. In the absence of
evidence or compelling argument in support thereof, however,
we are not persuaded that this would have been the case. In 3
our view, the only suggestion for modifying Totten in the
3The mere fact that the prior art structure could be
modified does not make such a modification obvious unless the
prior art suggests the desirability of doing so. See In re
Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed.
Cir.1984).
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