Appeal No. 1999-1652 Page 4
Application No. 08/758,369
The prior art applied in rejecting the claims follows:
Tamura Japanese Patent Disclosure 60-250962 Dec. 11,
19851
Barbero et al. (Barbero) 4,432,003
Feb. 14, 1984.
Claims 1-4 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) as being
obvious over Tamura in view of Barbero. Rather than reiterate
the arguments of the appellants or examiner in toto, we refer
the reader to the briefs and answer for the respective details
thereof.
OPINION
After considering the record, we are persuaded that the
examiner erred in rejecting claims 1-4. Accordingly, we
reverse. We begin by noting the following principles from In
re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed.
Cir. 1993).
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the
examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a
prima facie case of obviousness. In re Oetiker, 977
F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir.
1992).... "A prima facie case of obviousness is
established when the teachings from the prior art
1A copy of the translation prepared by FLS, Inc. (April
1998) for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is attached.
We will refer to the translation by its page numbers.
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