Appeal No. 2000-0477
Application No. 08/834,410
(CCPA 1972). Here, the several features referred to by the
examiner are not clearly and unequivocally disclosed by Masters
as a combination of method steps in accordance with the rejected
claims. Similarly, these various disclosed features are not
directly related to each other by patentee’s teachings. Thus, it
is apparent that the features in question are combinable, if at
all, only from the perspective of an artisan with ordinary skill
at the time the appellant’s invention was made via the exercise
of selectively picking, choosing and combining various
disclosures of the Masters reference. Such an exercise may fall
within the scope of obviousness but certainly not anticipation.
Id.
For these reasons, we cannot sustain the examiner’s Section
102 rejection of claims 6-8 as being anticipated by Masters.
The above discussed deficiency of Masters vis-à-vis
anticipation is not cured in the Section 103 rejections of claim
10 over Masters or of claim 9 over Masters in view of Drummond.
This is because the conclusions of obviousness made by the
examiner in these rejections unquestionably do not relate to the
issue of combining various features disclosed in the Masters
reference in such a manner as to achieve the method defined by
5
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007