Appeal No. 2003-0625 Page 4
Application No. 09/954,729
The appellant argues that because Billingsley and Maeda are in distinctly
different fields (Billingsley in the retroreflective article field and Maeda in the synthetic
leather field), there is no suggestion to combine their teachings (brief, pages 4-7).
For a prima facie case of obviousness to be established, the applied prior art
must be such that it would have provided one of ordinary skill in the art with both 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).
One of ordinary skill in the art would have been motivated to use Maeda’s
reactive dye as Billingsley’s dye to obtain improved washing fastness as disclosed by
Maeda (col. 6, lines 29-31). One of ordinary skill in the art would have had a
reasonable expectation of success in doing so because one of Billingsley’s two
preferred polymers is a poly(urethane-urea) (col. 4, lines 35-36), and Maeda teaches
that the reactive dye adheres to the polymer by forming urethane or urea type covalent
bonds with the polymer (col. 6, lines 25-27).
The appellant argues that the working examples show that the invention provides
good retroreflectivity and good industrial wash durability (brief, page 7). This argument
is not well taken because the appellant has not carried the burden of explaining the
relevance of the relied-upon evidence. See In re Borkowski, 505 F.2d 713, 719, 184
USPQ 29, 33 (CCPA 1974).
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