Appeal No. 2002-1192
Application 09/256,383
tanks for the underground storage of motor spirits and other
petroleum products. Like appellant (brief, pages 9-10), we have
reviewed these two patents, but find nothing therein which would
have led one of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
appellant’s invention to the combination posited by the examiner
or to any combination which would have resulted in the particular
internal truss-braced polygonal tank or method of construction
thereof defined in the claims before us on appeal. In that
regard, we share appellant’s view that the examiner’s position
regarding the purported obviousness of claims 4, 6, 10, 15 and 17
through 20 represents a classic case of the examiner using
impermissible hindsight derived from appellant’s own disclosure
in an attempt to reconstruct appellant’s claimed subject matter
from disparate teachings and broad concepts purported to be
present in the applied prior art.
Since we are in agreement with appellant that the teachings
and suggestions which would have been fairly derived from Lalvani
and Lawman would not have made the subject matter as a whole of
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