Appeal No. 2002-0605 Page 4
Application No. 09/096,542
adduced by the examiner is insufficient to establish a case of obviousness with respect
to the claims under appeal. Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner's rejection of
claims 1 to 3, 5 to 7, 9 and 11 to 17 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Our reasoning for this
determination follows.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531, 1532, 28
USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A 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).
All the rejections under appeal are based upon the examiner's determination that
it would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person of ordinary
skill in the art to have either (1) modified Snaith's isolator to have made the arched
flexural support elements 44 from Nitinol based on Hochstein's teaching (column 2,
lines 12-19) that Nitinol in the martensitic phase with a tensile yield strength in excess
of 200,000 p.s.i. and an elastic modulus of about 4x106 p.s.i. makes excellent springs,
and in fact can store significantly more energy than steel because of the eight-fold
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