Appeal No. 1999-1321
Application No. 08/625,495
applicant.” In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir.
1993). Prima facie obviousness based on a combination of references requires
that the prior art provide “a reason, suggestion, or motivation to lead an inventor
to combine those references.” Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics
Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573, 37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629 (Fed. Cir. 1996).
In this case, the examiner has not established that a person skilled in the
art would have been motivated to combine the cited references. Stoltz discloses
a salad dressing spray, while Joanides discloses a cosmetic composition for
removing wrinkles. Neither Stoltz nor Joanides discloses any insect repellant or
insecticidal activity of their respective compositions. Although the examiner
states that “[t]hese compositions would reasonably be expected to constitute
natural insect repellants,” Examiner’s Answer, page 4, she provides no evidence
or scientific reasoning to support this assertion.
Melnicake discloses an insecticidal composition, but nowhere discloses
that the composition is suitable for application to skin or hair. The closest
Melnicake comes to suggesting a veterinary or pharmaceutical application of his
compositions is to suggest that they can be applied to plants (page 3, lines 27-
31).
The examiner has not adequately explained why a person of skill in the art
would have been motivated to combine the components of these seemingly
disparate compositions, so as to produce a composition as now claimed. The
defined in “volume per volume” percentages. The examiner’s rejection does not address this
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