Appeal No. 2002-1054 Page 6
Application No. 09/436,333
assumption or hindsight reconstruction to supply deficiencies in the factual basis for the
rejection. See In re Warner, 379 F.2d 1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 178 (CCPA 1967),
cert. denied, 389 U.S. 1057 (1968). Our reviewing court has repeatedly cautioned
against employing hindsight by using the appellant's disclosure as a blueprint to
reconstruct the claimed invention from the isolated teachings of the prior art. See, e.g.,
Grain Processing Corp. v. American Maize-Products Co., 840 F.2d 902, 907,
5 USPQ2d 1788, 1792 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
In view of the foregoing, we will not sustain this rejection as it is directed to claim
14.
Claim 15 recites the step of placing items upon a slidable cover plate. We will not
sustain this rejection as it is directed to claim 15 and claims 16 to 19 dependent thereon
because neither Eastman nor Cooley discloses placement of items on a slidable cover
plate and as we discussed above, there is no motivation to combine the teachings of
Eastman and Cooley.
We turn next to the examiner’s rejection of claims 3 to 6 under 35 U.S.C. § 103
as being unpatentable over Cooley in view of Eastman as applied to claims 1, 2, 7 and
and further in view of Schmidt. We have reviewed the disclosure of Schmidt and
determined that Schmidt does not cure the deficiencies noted above for the combination
of Cooley and Eastman. Therefore, we will not sustain this rejection for the same
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