Appeal No. 1998-2327
Application No. 08/467,619
appellant. These considerations lead us to conclude that we
cannot sustain the § 103 rejection before us.
Viewed in a light most generous to the examiner, the
applied references at least arguably teach or would have
suggested each of the respective features required by
appealed, independent claim 1 which is the broadest claim on
appeal. However, we share the appellant’s basic viewpoint
that these references contain no teaching or suggestion for
combining their teachings in such a manner as to achieve the
here-claimed invention. Like the appellant, we believe that
the only guidance for so combining the applied reference
teachings is based upon impermissible hindsight derived from
the appellant’s own disclosure (W.L. Gore & Assocs. v.
Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13 (Fed.
Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984)) rather than
some teaching, suggestion or incentive derived from the prior
art
(ACS Hosp. Sys., Inc. v. Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572,
1577, 221 USPQ 929, 933 (Fed. Cir. 1984)).
More specifically, it is our determination that the
applied prior art contains no teaching or suggestion of the
6
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007