Appeal No. 2000-0085
Application No. 08/802,582
is no motivation, teaching or suggestion in the three applied
references, whether considered individually or collectively,
for the examiner’s proposed combination thereof in such a
manner as to result in appellants’ claimed frangible aircraft
floor (claim 1) or method of equalizing pressure in an
aircraft (claim 7). In our opinion, the examiner has used
impermissible hindsight derived from appellants’ own teachings
in seeking to combine the spring biased, pivotally mounted
decompression relief valve of Brandon, the sealed frangible
aircraft floor structure of McIntyre and the safety fitting of
Dernbach in a manner so as to result in appellants’ claimed
subject matter. In this regard, we note that, as our court of
review indicated in In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266 n.15, 23
USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 n.15 (Fed. Cir. 1992), it is
impermissible to use the claimed invention as an instruction
manual or “template” to piece together isolated disclosures
and teachings of the prior art so that the claimed invention
is rendered obvious. That same court has also cautioned
against focussing on the obviousness of the differences
between the claimed invention and the prior art rather than on
the invention as a whole as 35 U.S.C. 103 requires, as we
8
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007