Appeal No. 2000-2262
Application No. 08/990,996
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 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 n.14
(Fed. Cir. 1992).
As pointed out by Appellant (Reply Brief, page 1), the
piercing members 56 in Chadbourne are formed by stamping the edge
of a hole into a receiving area. There is no indication from the
Examiner as to how and in what manner the skilled artisan might
take the piercing member disclosure of Gerhard, which involves
longitudinally extending multiple teeth, and adapt it to the
stamped out piercing member of Chadbourne to form a set of
multiple teeth. Further, as asserted by Appellant (id., at page
2), Chadbourne explicitly teaches against (column 3, lines 32-34)
any further deforming or machining of the stamped out piercing
member, which would be necessary to form the multiple teeth
according to the Examiner’s proposed modification, in order to
maintain the sharpness of the piercing member tip.
Further, we find no evidence forthcoming from the Examiner
that would support the contention (Answer, pages 5 and 6) that a
skilled artisan would have found it obvious to replace the single
tooth multiple piercing tabs of Chadbourne with a single tab
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