Appeal No. 1998-2570
Application No. 08/381,156
In response, Appellant asserts several arguments (Brief,
pages 7-9) in support of the position that the Examiner has
not established proper motivation for the proposed combination
of references so as to set forth a prima facie case of
obviousness. After careful review of the applied prior art in
light of the arguments of record, we are in agreement with
Appellant’s position as stated in the Brief. 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 our view that, while a showing of proper motivation
does not require that a combination of prior art teachings be
made for the same reason as Appellant to achieve the claimed
invention, we can find no motivation for the skilled artisan
to apply the deformable faceplate configuration teachings of
Schell to the micromirror device of Nathanson. There is
nothing in the disclosure of Nathanson to indicate that the
correction of phase errors or perturbations in an impinging
light beam wavefront to produce an undistorted image, the
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