Appeal No. 2001-1355
Application No. 09/110,348
of MacCracken’s disclosure of a removable top (hood 31) and
support wall (cover 26) on the rim of a housing (container 22)
to employ a similar arrangement in the Karge apparatus to
facilitate replacing or installing the cooling medium.
Obviousness cannot be established by combining prior art
absent some teaching or suggestion supporting the combination;
in other words, the mere fact that prior art may be modified
in a manner proposed by an examiner would not have made the
modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d
1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir. 1992). The
proposed combination of Karge and MacCracken would involve a
complicated and extensive reconstruction of the Karge
apparatus beginning with the placement of the air conditioning
and fan unit housing 22 over the ice chest 1. The alleged
incentive for this dubious change, to facilitate the
installation or replacement of the cooling medium, does not
stand up in view of Karge’s side access door 2 which would be
far superior to the removable support wall and top/dome
embodied by the proposed modification in terms of easy
addition and replacement of the cooling medium. In this
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