Appeal No. 2002-0882
Application 09/161,146
In proposing to combine Showalter, Morscheck and the
admitted prior art to reject independent claims 1 and 14, the
examiner first implies (see page 2 in Paper No. 11) that
Holdeman, incorporated by reference into Showalter, would have
suggested utilizing Showalter’s transfer case as an automotive
transmission, and then concludes that it would have been obvious
to a person of ordinary skill in the art “to combine the
synchronization prediction [of Showalter] and the semi-automatic
transmission of Morscheck et al. because such modification would
result in a semi-automatic transmission that can predict
synchronization and complete shifts faster” (Paper No. 11, pages
2 and 3), and
to use the acknowledgement [sic] device of the
admission in the invention of Showalter et al. and
Morscheck et al. because in order to increase the speed
of synchronization in a semi-automatic transmission
that has a manual clutch the driver would have to be
the recipient of the signal instead of an automatic
clutch actuator in an automatic transmission [Paper No.
11, page 3].
There is nothing in the combined teachings of the foregoing
prior art items, however, which would have suggested such wide
ranging modifications of the Showalter transfer case and its
method of operation. The radical nature of these modifications
and the lack of any underlying incentive or motivation in the
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