Appeal No. 2001-2636
Application No. 09/160,127
made it obvious to provide Ratzel’s machine with a control
processing means “to monitor a machine away from [sic, at a
location remote from?] the actual machine being monitored”
(answer, page 4). Reference is made to the examiner’s
answer for further details of the rejections.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the
examiner bears the initial burden of presenting a prima
facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d
1531, 1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima
facie case of obviousness is established by presenting
evidence that would have led one of ordinary skill in the
art to combine the relevant teachings of the references to
arrive at the claimed invention. See In re Fine, 837 F.2d
1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re
Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013, 1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA
1972). Upon evaluation of the evidence before us, it is
our conclusion that the evidence adduced by the examiner is
insufficient to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness. Accordingly, we will not sustain the
examiner’s rejections of the appealed claims.
In the present case, independent claims 47 and 75 are
limited to the retrieval of machine information from a
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