Appeal No. 2002-1598 Page 7
Application No. 09/596,975
from the knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in the art and not from
the appellant's disclosure. See, for example, Uniroyal, Inc. v. Rudkin-Wiley Corp.,
837 F.2d 1044, 1052, 5 USPQ2d 1434, 1439 (Fed. Cir.), cert. denied, 488 U.S. 825
(1988).
The first of these rejections is that claims 21-27, 31-36, 39 and 40 are
unpatentable over Booth in view of Official Notice that using a controller such as a
switch to control a vehicle/train is conventional. The examiner’s theory is that Booth
discloses all of the structure recited in claim 21 except for the controller, but that it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to provide the Booth system
with a controller, on the basis of Official Notice that this is a known feature in the art.
Booth discloses a toy electric train that runs along a track. The engine is
equipped with an “optical sensing means” that detects images or scenes that appear in
front of the engine, which are reproduced on a television monitor for viewing by the
operator. There is no mention in Booth of utilizing this video presentation for anything
other than enhancing the attractiveness of operating the train. While we would agree
with the examiner that controllers for toy vehicles are known in the art, we fail to
perceive any teaching, suggestion or incentive which would have led one of ordinary
skill in the art to provide the Booth system with a controller that automatically identifies
the image element in the video and then uses that video image to automatically control
the vehicle.
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