Appeal No. 1999-2713 Page 12
Application No. 08/801,805
reason that APA does not have the problem of non-uniform
brightness due to opposing light sources.
Obviousness cannot be established by combining the
teachings of the prior art to produce the claimed invention,
absent some teaching or suggestion supporting the combination.
See ACS Hosp. Sys., Inc. v. Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572,
1577, 221 USPQ 929, 933 (Fed. Cir. 1984). Teachings of
references can be combined only if there is some suggestion or
incentive to do so. Here, the prior art contains none.
Instead, it appears to us that the examiner relied on
hindsight in reaching the obviousness determination. In
addition, even if APA were provided with a roughened emission
surface as advanced by the examiner, the claims would still
not be met because there is no evidence that the level of
roughness applied to the emitting surface would "prevent the
light control member from adhering to the emitting surface
without losing the directivity of light emitted from the
emitting surface" as recited in independent claims 1 and 7.
In Endo, a space is formed between the emitting surface and
the uniform diffusion layer. As a result, Endo need only set
the roughness of the emitting layer to the amount necessary to
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