Appeal No. 2000-0198 Page 4
Application No. 08/400,178
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).
Claim 22 requires that the modular trial instrumentation comprise, inter alia,
quick release interlock means for joining a selected trial head component to
a selected trial stem component . . . with the distal end of the selected trial
stem component . . . received in the medullary canal of the bone . . . [and]
allowing the selected trial head component to be separated from the
selected trial stem component while the distal end of the selected stem trial
component remains implanted in the medullary canal of the bone and by
allowing another trial head component to be connected to the selected trial
stem component while the distal end of the selected trial stem component
remains implanted in the medullary canal of the bone; the quick release
interlock means including means for allowing the selected trial head
component to be disconnected from the selected trial stem component in a
direction along the longitudinal axis of the selected trial stem component.
Kenna is directed to a modular prosthesis device upon which a ball is mounted. The
examiner apparently considers main portion 22 to be the trial head component and stems
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