Appeal No. 2003-0966
Application No. 09/496,486
Figure 1 mounting plate] in a single direction, in order
to reduce manufacturing costs and assembly time, while
enhancing the strength of the design. Therefore, it
would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the
art to use a mounting plate having flanges, as taught by
the admitted prior art, in the Elson invention, in order
to advantageously provide sufficient support for the
compressors, and to design the flanges in the same,
upwardly-turned direction, in order to advantageously
provide for ease of manufacturing and reduced
manufacturing costs.
Rejections based on 35 U.S.C. § 103 must rest on a factual
basis. In making such a rejection, the examiner has the initial
duty of supplying the requisite factual basis and may not, because
of doubts that the invention is patentable, resort to speculation,
unfounded assumptions or hindsight reconstruction to supply
deficiencies in the factual basis. In re GPAC, Inc., 57 F.3d 1573,
1582, 35 USPQ2d 1116, 1123 (Fed. Cir. 1995); In re Warner, 379 F.2d
1011, 1017, 154 USPQ 173, 177-78 (CCPA 1967), cert. denied, 389
U.S. 1057 (1968).
Appellant’s specification (page 2) provides the following
explanation of the relationship between “Prior Art” Figure 1 and
the claimed invention:
The typical method for mounting tandem compressors is to
provide a pair of parallel mounting rails 124 to which
two compressors 110 and two foot plates 112 are secured.
Because foot plate 112 includes four downward turned
flanges 116-122, both ends of two opposed flanges 116 and
118 or 120 and 122 must be reworked or machined as shown
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