Appeal No. 2000-2016 Page 7
Application No. 09/209,837
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).
Cox discloses a grenade launcher (11) for attachment to the barrel of a firearm by
means of an adapter (12). The adapter comprises a cylindrical body having a central bore
sized to fit over the barrel of the firearm and a plurality of radially oriented slots extending
along a substantial portion of its length. The launcher has at its proximal end a slotted
cylindrical casing that fits around the adapter, and a clamping band (29) that acts to
tighten down on both the adapter and the surrounding casing to cause the adapter to be
clamped to the barrel. The aiming sight on the barrel is received in one of the slots in the
adapter.
Soussloff has been described above with regard to the Section 102 rejection. It is
the examiner’s view that Cox discloses all of the structure recited in claim 1 except for the
particular means for clamping the device onto the barrel of the firearm. However, it is the
examiner’s position that such is disclosed by Soussloff and it would have been obvious to
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