Appeal No. 2000-2116 Page 4
Application No. 09/246,460
metes and bounds of the claims can readily be ascertained by one of ordinary skill in the
art.
We therefore will not sustain the Section 112 rejection of claims 58-75 and 88-100.
The Rejections Under Section 103
Independent claims 76 and 88, along with dependent claims 77-80, 82, 83 and 89-
98, stand rejected as being unpatentable over Tobias in view of Park. 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).
Independent claim 76 is directed to a receptacle that is mounted in a truck. The
claimed apparatus comprises, inter alia, a rear wall having a conveyor rear opening and a
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