Appeal No.1997-0898
Application No. 08/281,879
After careful review of applied prior art references in
light of the arguments of record, we are in agreement with
Appellants’ position as stated in the Briefs. As asserted by
Appellants, Murdock is not concerned with techniques of
downsampling but, rather, with a method that provides a
determination of the image of a particular component based on
the output of each optical character recognition system in a set
of character recognition systems. We find no compelling reason
offered by the Examiner for the skilled artisan to look to
Murdock to solve the downsampling problem suggested by APA. In
our view, any suggestion to make the Examiner’s proposed
combination does not come from the references themselves but
instead from Appellants’ own disclosure. The mere fact that the
prior art may be modified in the manner suggested by the
Examiner does not make 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).
It is also apparent to us from the Examiner’s line of
reasoning in the Answer that, since the Examiner has mistakenly
interpreted the disclosure of Murdock, the issue of the
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