Appeal No. 1998-3353
Application 08/692,711
facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d
1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A
prima facie case of obviousness is established by
presenting evidence that would have led one of ordinary
skill in the art to combine the relevant teachings of the
references in a manner to arrive at the claimed
invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d
1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re Lintner, 458 F.2d
1013, 1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
In applying the teachings of the applied references
in each of the standing rejections, the examiner has
apparently lost sight of the fact that the selector and
ratchet mechanism disclosed in each of the applied
secondary references is distinctly different from the
selector and ratchet mechanism disclosed in the Herman
patent. As a consequence, a substantially complete
reconstruction of Herman’s mechanism would be required to
incorporate the particular teachings of each secondary
reference into Herman’s structure. Such a requirement
cannot be glossed over by generalizing the teachings of
each secondary reference and applying those teachings
with the hindsighted benefit of appellants’ disclosure as
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007