Appeal No. 2000-1746
Application 08/791,098
regarding the purported obviousness of claim 1 on appeal
represents a classic case of the examiner using impermissible
hindsight in order to reconstruct appellant’s claimed subject
matter. In our opinion, there is no motivation or suggestion
in the applied patents to Krumholz and Baldwin which would
have reasonably led one of ordinary skill in the art to modify
the wire flower support of Krumholz in the particular manner
urged by the examiner. In the first place, Krumholz emphasizes
the need in his flower support for shallow indentations (3)
and deeper indentations (4) and (5) in the head that have
their mouths opening outwardly and which assist in the
arrangement of flowers into a bouquet so that the flowers have
proper spacing to provide an attractive and esthetic
appearance. This aspect of the flower support of Krumholz
would be essentially lost in the combination urged by the
examiner.
As a further point, we note that the wire flower supports
of Krumholz and Baldwin are substantially different one from
the other and that we see no reasonable suggestion as to why
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