Appeal No. 2003-1220
Application No. 09/830,420
With respect to the Examiner’s 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) rejection
of appealed claims 14-30, Appellants assert that the Examiner has
failed to establish a prima facie case of obviousness since all
of the claimed limitations are not taught or suggested by any of
the applied prior art references. After careful review of the
applied prior art references, in light of the arguments of
record, we are in general agreement with Appellants’ position as
stated in the Brief.
As indicated by the cases cited supra, the Examiner has at
least two responsibilities in setting forth a rejection under
35 U.S.C. § 103. First, the Examiner must identify all the
differences between the claimed invention and the teachings of
the prior art. Second, the Examiner must explain why the
identified differences would have been the result of an obvious
modification of the prior art. In our view, the Examiner has not
properly addressed his first responsibility so that it is
impossible that he has successfully fulfilled his second
responsibility.
With respect to appealed independent claims 14 and 26, the
Examiner, aside from asserting the existence of the claimed
“safety chain” of switches in each of the applied prior art
references, has never attempted to show how each of the remaining
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