Appeal No. 2000-1010 Page 5
Application No. 08/951,402
Patz is to be structurally modified so as to result in an
apparatus that includes the cleaning and coating stations A-D as
disclosed by Patz yet also include diametrically opposed airlocks
and associated conveyors as required by the appealed claims. The
explanation of motivation offered in the answer by the examiner
is not persuasive since the nature of the proposed structural
modification of the device of Patz is not made clear by the
examiner. Additionally, the examiner has not pointed to any
disclosure in Patz which suggests that “an in-line system with
efficient metalizing in which indexing problems are reduced to a
minimum” (answer, page 6) would be recognized by one of ordinary
skill in the art as a concern for the cleaning and coating
apparatus of Patz. The examiner simply has not adequately
explained why one of ordinary skill in the art would turn to the
disparate disclosures and concerns of Schwartz and Takahashi to
modify the apparatus of Patz. We note that the examiner has not
explained how the additional references applied to claims 9, 11
and 12 cure the above-noted deficiencies.
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. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d
1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 177 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389 U.S.
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