Appeal No. 2000-1765
Application No. 08/947,895
played. See Appellants Specification, page 2, lines 24-28, and
page 3, lines 1-3.
Now we must consider the Examiner's argument that it would
have been obvious to modify Araki and Appellants' admitted prior
art to provide limitations claimed in claims 1 and 24. In this
regard, the Federal Circuit states that
[t]he mere fact that the prior art may be modified in
the manner suggested by the Examiner does not make the
modification obvious unless the prior art suggested the
desirability of the modification. In re Fritch, 972
F.2d 1260, 1266 n.14, 23 USPQ 1780, 1783-84 n.14 (Fed.
Cir. 1992), citing In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221
USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
As discussed above, Araki is not concerned with the problem
that Appellants are solving. Araki is concerned with the problem
of balancing an abrupt unbalance of a rotational shaft during a
high-speed rotation in rotary spray type metal powder
manufacturing apparatus. See Araki, page 3, lines 25-26, and
page 4, lines 1-2. We find that even if Araki could be used to
modify Appellants' admitted prior art (see Appellants' Figure 1)
to add an automatic balancer to a disc player, there is no
suggestion in Araki to do such a modification. In fact, although
Araki relates to an automatic balancing device for a rotary body
of a metal powder manufacturing apparatus, Araki does not teach a
modification of a disk player to include an automatic balancing
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