Appeal No. 2003-1358
Application No. 09/963,910
certainly been motivated to make the proposed modification simply
for the reason of taking advantage of an alternative in the art
for adjusting mirrors, i.e., electric motors 8 and 9, as
disclosed by do Espirito Santo (Fig. 2).
The arguments advanced by appellant (main brief, pages 4
through 8 and reply brief, pages 2 and 3) fail to persuade us of
error on the part of the examiner in concluding that the mirror
of claim 3 would have been obvious based upon the collective
teachings of the applied prior art. We do not share appellant’s
unsupported assertion (reply brief, page 2) that the applied
references are “non-analogous sources.” Clearly, each of the
examiner’s references evidences highly relevant, analogous prior
art. As explained above, the applied prior art itself provides
the requisite teachings and ample suggestion to support the
obviousness rejection, without any reliance upon impermissible
hindsight. As a final point, we would simply add that those
skilled in this art, at the time of the present invention, would
have been expected to utilize a known control unit to operate the
respective electric motors taught by do Espirito Santo.
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