Appeal No. 2003-0760
Application No. 05/730,221
We will not sustain this rejection. We do not find the
motivation set forth by the examiner for combining the teachings
of Mitchell and Marcoux as persuasive. This is because Mitchell
heats his butchering knife with a circuit controlled by a
rheostat, not a thermostat. Mitchell’s rheostat does not
automatically adjust the circuit in order to maintain a knife at
constant temperature, as would a thermostat. Accordingly, the
teachings in Marcoux as to the disadvantages of a thermostat-
ically controlled circuit would not have applied to Mitchell’s
circuit controlled by a rheostat. Otherwise, appellant is
correct that there is no suggestion from the prior art that it
would have been in any way desirable to modify the heated
butchering knife of Mitchell so as to maintain the knife at a
constant elevated temperature for its disclosed purpose of
trimming animal corpus in a cold room.
The Rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103
of Claims 11, 12, 17, 18, 21 and 22
We found, above, that motivation for combining the teachings
of Mitchell and Marcoux was not established. Whereas Hirschhorn
is not relied upon in the rejection for establishing such
motivation, but is relied upon to establish that the use of
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