Appeal No. 2002-1589
Application 09/280,180
first detenting structure, lacks any factual basis or support in
the applied patent. Moreover, the assertion that the portions
labeled by the examiner as FW and SW in Kund Figure 14 “are
inherently resilient in nature” and “are deflectable upon enough
force actuated by the cable” (answer, page 5) is totally without
support in the Kund reference and entirely speculative on the
examiner's part. In that regard, it is well settled that
inherency may not be established by probabilities or
possibilities, but must instead be "the natural result flowing
from the operation as taught." See In re Oelrich, 666 F.2d 578,
581, 212 USPQ 323, 326 (CCPA 1981). In the present case, there
is no basis to believe that the Kund device necessarily would
release a cable end protuberance by resilient deflection as
opposed to simply pulling the entire rack (89) out of the device
or by some other destruction of the device or rack (89). Thus,
neither the Kund patent nor the examiner provides an adequate
factual basis to establish that the natural result flowing from
following the teachings of that patent would be a gear indicating
apparatus like that claimed by appellant.
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