Appeal No. 2003-0401
Application 09/490,954
considered the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin’s neutralization
of residual stresses in glass cloth used to make a printed
circuit board laminate, or Benzinger’s joining of two half-cores
to provide the desired thickness of a printed circuit board
laminate, to be a applicable to aircraft skins. Second, the test
for obviousness is not whether the applied references provide no
reason to believe that one of ordinary skill in the art would not
have carried out the claimed invention. The test is whether the
applied prior art would have provided one of ordinary skill in
the art with a motivation to carry out the claimed invention and
a reasonable expectation of success in doing so. See In re
Vaeck, 947 F.2d 488, 493, 20 USPQ2d 1438, 1442 (Fed. Cir. 1991);
In re O’Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 902, 7 USPQ2d 1673, 1680 (Fed.
Cir. 1988). The examiner has not established that the
disclosures in the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin and
Benzinger for making printed circuit board laminates would have
provided one of ordinary skill in the art with 1) a motivation to
apply the disclosed cutting and inversion techniques to the
manufacture of the aircraft skins of Hunt, Elrod and Palmer, and
2) a reasonable expectation of success in doing so. As indicated
by the above discussion of the examiner’s rejection, the record
indicates that the motivation relied upon by the examiner for
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