Appeal No. 2001-0735 Page 9
Application No. 09/135,390
already, in our opinion, functions to smooth pulsation of the
pressurized fluid being discharged from port 20, there would
be no motivation from the teachings of Osada for a person of
ordinary skill in the art to have reversed the flow in the
vacuum unit of the Admitted Prior Art.
In our opinion, the only suggestion for modifying the
vacuum unit of the Admitted Prior Art in the manner proposed
by the examiner to arrive at the claimed invention 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
follows that we cannot sustain the examiner's rejections of
claims 1, 2 and 4.
CONCLUSION
To summarize, the decision of the examiner to reject
claims 1, 2 and 4 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
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