Appeal No. 1999-1728 Page 7
Application No. 08/750,041
agree with the appellants that, lacking such evidence, there
is no prima facie case of obviousness.
Rejections based on ' 103 must rest on a factual basis
with these facts being interpreted without hindsight
reconstruction of the invention from the prior art. The
examiner may not, because of doubt that the invention is
patentable, resort to speculation, unfounded assumption or
hindsight reconstruction to supply deficiencies in the factual
basis for the rejection. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011,
1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S.
1057 (1968). Our reviewing court has repeatedly cautioned
against employing hindsight by using the appellant's
disclosure as a blueprint to reconstruct the claimed invention
from the isolated teachings of the prior art. See, e.g.,
Grain Processing Corp. v. American Maize-Products Co., 840
F.2d 902, 907, 5 USPQ2d 1788, 1792 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
For the above reasons, we will not sustain the examiner's
rejection of claim 11. The other independent claim, claim 1,
requires a connector arrangement like that of claim 11, i.e.
claim 1 requires "a plurality of connectors (27, 28) which
connect to lines for the delivery of flowing media, one of
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