Appeal No. 2002-0070
Application No. 09/537,949
assuming that a person of ordinary skill in the art were motivated to provide packaging for the
pillow of Matthews, it is not apparent to us why such a person would have looked to the teachings
of Blais, a reference which expresses no concern whatsoever for packaging a pillow, but is instead
concerned with the specific needs associated with the packaging of a cordset formed into a hank.
The broad reference in Blais to providing product information on the packaging for an article that
differs substantially in both form and function from that disclosed by Matthews does not provide a
reasonable basis for the examiner’s conclusion that it would have been obvious to one having
ordinary skill in the art to provide the pillow of Matthews with the wrap of Blais. Given the
disparate natures of the inventions and objectives of Matthews and Blais, it is apparent to us that the
examiner is using the hindsight benefit of appellant’s own disclosure to extract from Blais an
isolated teaching regarding providing product information to a would-be purchaser in order to
justify the selective combination of the cordset wrap of Blais with the pillow of Matthews in an
attempt to reconstruct a facsimile of appellant’s claimed subject matter. However, as our court of
review indicated in In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1266, 23 USPQ2d 1780, 1783 (Fed. Cir. 1992), it is
impermissible to use the claimed invention as an instruction manual or “template” in attempting to
piece together isolated disclosures and teachings of the prior art so that the claimed invention is
rendered obvious.
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