Appeal No. 2001-1636 Page 5
Application No. 09/226,890
Claims 1 to 12 and 21 to 23
We find ourselves in agreement with the appellants' position set forth in the briefs
with regard to the various rejections of claims 1 to 12 and 21 to 23 before us in this appeal.
Thus, we agree that the applied prior art does not teach or suggest the furniture system
wherein freestanding first and second furniture units are positioned to completely fill the
internal dimension of an office area defined by spaced apart partitions of a partition
system as recited in claims 1 to 12 and 21 to 23.
In our view, the only suggestion for modifying Roche to provide a furniture system
wherein freestanding first and second furniture units are positioned to completely fill the
internal dimension of an office area defined by spaced apart partitions of a partition
system stems from hindsight knowledge derived from the appellants' own disclosure. The
use of such hindsight knowledge to support an obviousness rejection under 35 U.S.C. §
103 is, of course, impermissible. See, for example, W. L. Gore and Assocs., Inc. v.
Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13 (Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied,
469 U.S. 851 (1984).
Moreover, we note that in the rejections of claims 1 to 12 and 21 to 23 the examiner
provided (answer, pp. 4 and 6) "Note: the partitions [of Hobgood] could be spaced so that
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