Appeal No. 2000-0852 Page 3
Application No. 09/061,314
The rejection is under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The test for obviousness is what the
combined teachings of the prior art would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in the art.
See, for example, In re Keller, 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).
The appellants have disclosed their invention as being usable in conjunction with
the hand parking brake system used on railway cars. They point out that the levers used to
unlatch such parking brakes have been known to remain in the operating position after the
parking brake is released, in which position they extend essentially horizontally outward,
wherein they constitute a safety problem to persons climbing about on the railcars and to
structures that are closely adjacent thereto, which can be struck by the protruding handle.
The appellants’ invention overcomes this problem by providing a two-piece handle, the
outer portion of which is hinged to the inner portion so that it hangs downwardly when
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