Appeal No. 1999-2456 Page 6
Application No. 08/655,649
opening. Thus, the applied prior art would not have been
suggestive of the claimed invention. 3
In our view, the only suggestion for modifying the
applied prior art to arrive at the claimed invention would
stem from hindsight knowledge derived from the appellant's own
disclosure. The use of such hindsight knowledge to support an
obviousness rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is, of course,
impermissible. See, for example, W. L. Gore and Associates,
Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-
13 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984).
For the reasons set forth above, we cannot sustain the
examiner's rejections of claims 1, 2 and 7 to 15.
3We have also reviewed the reference to Easterbrook. The
examiner applied this reference solely for its suggestion of
replacing the material of the cowling cover of Heinz with a
cowling cover made of a flexible magnetic material. While the
shut-off panel of Easterbrook is a generally planar intake
cover having a perimeter configuration substantially the same
as the outlet register of a forced air system, we see no
suggestion or motivation therein to have changed the size of
the cowling cover of Heinz.
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