Appeal No. 2002-0209
Application 09/299,452
a consequence of our review, we have made the determination that
the examiner's rejection of the appealed claims under 35 U.S.C.
§ 103(a) will not be sustained. Our reasons for this
determination follow.
Appellant argues, and we strongly agree, that Taylor and
Ziemba, whether considered alone or in combination, do not teach,
and would not have reasonably suggested to one of ordinary skill in
the art at the time of appellant’s invention, a bulk bag and
integral inflatable stand as set forth in the claims before us on
appeal. Like appellant, we consider that it is only by looking to
the disclosure of the present application that one of ordinary
skill in the art would have found a suggestion to selectively
combine the applied references in the manner urged by the examiner
to arrive at appellant’s claimed subject matter.
In our opinion, the examiner’s position represents a clear
case of impermissible hindsight reconstruction of the claimed
invention based upon appellant’s own teachings. In that regard, we
note, as our court of review indicated in In re Fritch, 972 F.2d
1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783 (Fed. Cir. 1992), that it is
impermissible to use the claimed invention as an instruction manual
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