Appeal No. 2000-1462
Application No. 08/592,427
stand or fall with independent claim 1.
The examiner has the initial burden of establishing a prima
facie case of obviousness of the claimed subject matter.
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; ACS Hosp.
Sys., 732 F.2d at 1577, 221 USPQ 929, 933 and “teachings of
references can be combined only if there is some suggestion or
incentive to do so.” Id.
It is the examiner’s position that Chia discloses the
preamble and the first recited element of claim 1 but fails to
disclose the remainder of the claim, i.e., “a picocell mobile
station which is assigned to the picocell and connectable by
telecommunications to a relay station contained in the
picocell...the relay station also having a function of a picocell
base station.” The examiner contends that Tsuda discloses a
system in which a relay station is utilized as it receives then
transmits information, referring to Figure 1. The examiner
concludes that it is “well known” to include in a cordless system
a relay as taught by Tsuda and that it would have been obvious to
modify Chia by “specifically disclosing a relay station within
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