Appeal No. 2000-0953 Page 9
Application No. 08/288,418
spectrum to the VHF region of the spectrum. Likewise,
Osterwalder and the Admitted Prior Art do not disclose an
antenna assembly having a substantially continuous bandwidth
from the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum to
the VHF region of the spectrum. To supply this omission in
the teachings of the applied prior art, the examiner made a
determination (answer, p. 4) that it would have been obvious
to modify Koepf to cover a wide range of frequencies.
However, even if true, this change to Koepf would not lead an
artisan to arrive at the claimed invention since it would not
meet the above-noted limitation of claims 1 to 18.
Moreover, in our view, the only suggestion for modifying
Koepf in the manner proposed by the examiner stems from
hindsight knowledge derived from the appellants' 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 Assocs., Inc.
v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13
(Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984). It
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