Appeal No. 2001-1417
Application No. 09/042,520
1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir. 1992). The Examiner's
statement of the grounds of rejection at page 6 of the Answer, is
lacking in any rationale as to why the skilled artisan would
modify Bronstein to add the stationary imaging devices of the
prior art. Nowhere does the Examiner identify any suggestion,
teaching, or motivation to combine the Ketley, Nishioka, or
Williams references with Bronstein nor does the Examiner
establish any findings as to the level of ordinary skill in the
art, the nature of the problem to be solved, or any other factual
findings that would support a proper obviousness analysis. See,
e.g., Pro-Mold & Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d
1568, 37 USPQ2d 1626 (Fed. Cir. 1996). In our opinion, the
problems attendant to synchronizing the operation of a printing
device in which two or more form cylinders share a single light
directing spinner device such as in Bronstein simply do not exist
in the single form cylinder devices of Nishioka and Williams or
the printing device using a flat optical mask such as in Ketley.
Given these deficiencies in the applied prior art references, it
is our view that any suggestion to combine the references in the
manner proposed by the Examiner could only come from Appellants’
own disclosure and not from any teaching in the references
themselves.
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