Appeal No. 2002-0995 Page 4
Application No. 09/243,882
In that Langville does not disclose each and every limitation of claim 1, the
subject matter of claim 1 is not anticipated2 by Langville. Accordingly, we cannot
sustain the examiner’s rejection of claim 1 or claims 2 and 4-6 which depend therefrom.
We turn now to the examiner’s rejection of claim 3 as being unpatentable over
Langville in view of Deutsch. Deutsch discloses a pie cutter comprising a plurality of
blades 7 which substantially converge at the center of the cutter and are held together
by a blade holder including an upper disk 1 and a lower disc 2 secured together by
screws 4. In that Langville’s coring device is provided with its center ferrule 10 so as to
form a coring element to cut out the core of a fruit, it is not apparent to us how Deutsch
provides any incentive for one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Langville’s device so
as to eliminate this center ferrule and provide cutting blades converging at the center
thereof. To do so would appear to render Langville’s device unsuitable for its intended
purpose and, thus, would not have been obvious.3 Accordingly, we conclude that the
additional teachings of Deutsch do not remedy the above-noted deficiency of Langville.
We thus cannot sustain the rejection of claim 3, which depends from claim 1, as being
unpatentable over Langville in view of Deutsch.
2 Anticipation is established only when a single prior art reference discloses, expressly or under
the principles of inherency, each and every element of a claimed invention. RCA Corp. v. Applied Digital
Data Sys., Inc., 730 F.2d 1440, 1444, 221 USPQ 385, 388 (Fed. Cir. 1984). In other words, there must be
no difference between the claimed invention and the reference disclosure, as viewed by a person of
ordinary skill in the field of the invention. Scripps Clinic & Research Found. v. Genentech Inc., 927 F.2d
1565, 1576, 18 USPQ2d 1001, 1010 (Fed. Cir. 1991).
3 It is of course well established that, where the proposed modification would render the prior art
invention being modified unsatisfactory for its intended purpose, the proposed modification would not have
been obvious. See Tec Air Inc. v. Denso Mfg. Michigan Inc., 192 F.3d 1353, 1360, 52 USPQ2d 1294,
1298 (Fed. Cir. 1999); In re Gordon, 733 F.2d 900, 902, 221 USPQ 1125, 1127 (Fed. Cir. 1984).
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