Appeal No. 2002-0312 Page 4
Application No. 08/953,922
carriage which raises, lowers, and pivots the snow plow blade in response to the output
control signal from the receiver.
All of the rejections are under 35 U.S.C. § 103. The test for obviousness is what
the combined teachings of the prior art would have suggested to one of ordinary skill in
the art. See, for example, In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208 USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA
1981). In establishing a prima facie case of obviousness, it is incumbent upon the
examiner to provide a reason why one of ordinary skill in the art would have been led to
modify a prior art reference or to combine reference teachings to arrive at the claimed
invention. See Ex parte Clapp, 227 USPQ 972, 973 (Bd. Pat. App. & Int. 1985). To this
end, the requisite motivation must stem from some teaching, suggestion or inference in
the prior art as a whole or from the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill
in the art and not from the appellant's disclosure. See, for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v.
Rudkin-Wiley Corp., 837 F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert.
denied, 488 U.S. 825 (1988).
(1)
In the first of the three rejections of claims 1-4 and 7-20, the examiner takes the
position that Hydra-scoop discloses all of the subject matter recited in claim 1 except for
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