Appeal No. 2003-0117
Application 09/747,077
as being “an essential feature” of appellant’s invention, wherein
it is specifically noted that either shoe of a pair of wedge-
soled bowling shoes may independently be a slide shoe or a
traction shoe according to the relative percentage of coefficient
of friction regions of the selected replaceable sole members
applied thereto, thereby allowing a single pair of shoes to be
adaptable to either a left- or right-handed bowler.
Like appellant (brief, pages 40-41), in this case, it is our
opinion that the examiner has engaged in “hindsight
reconstruction” by impermissibly drawing from appellant’s own
teachings and then picking and choosing from isolated disclosures
in the various prior art references in an attempt to declare the
claimed subject matter obvious, thereby falling victim to what
our reviewing Court has called “the insidious effect of a
hindsight syndrome wherein that which only the inventor has
taught is used against its teacher.” W.L. Gore & Associates,
Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 313
(Fed. Cir. 1983).
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