Appeal No. 2000-1971
Application No. 09/002,537
field of endeavor or pertinent to the problem with which
appellant is concerned. In the view we take of this case even
if we assume that Sheldon and Kelley are analogous art, the
obviousness rejections based thereon are not well founded.
In establishing a case of obviousness, it is incumbent on
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. See, e.g., Uniroyal,
Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d
1434, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
While we appreciate the examiner’s observations that
Sheldon and Kelley teach the use of reinforcing ribs to
strengthen structural members, it is not apparent to us why,
based only on the applied reference teachings, one of ordinary
would have been led to modify Schiappati in a way that would
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