Appeal No. 2003-1966 Page 8
Application 08/789,959
regard to claim 1 et al. (Brief, pages 14 and 15; Reply Brief, page 5), which we found
not to be persuasive. We therefore will sustain the rejection of claims 12 and 13 on the
basis of the same reasoning.
The Rejection Based Upon Moriyama And Sabonis
In this rejection of claims 1, 4 and 7-13, the examiner relied upon Sabonis for
teaching the use of a plurality of separately replaceable ink containers. However, in this
case we agree with the appellants that Sabonis fails to provide the requisite suggestion
that would have motivated one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Moriyama in the
manner proposed by the examiner. Sabonis is directed to an improved ink delivery
system for large format ink jet printers. While Sabonis discloses four ink jet sources 48
in four containers 50, the examiner has not directed us to information in this reference
which would provide suggestion to one of ordinary skill in the art to replace the system
disclosed in Moriyama with separately replaceable containers, and we have not found
such on our own.
We therefore are of the view that the combined teachings of Moriyama and
Sabonis fail to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with regard to the subject
matter recited in independent claims 1, 12 and 13, and we will not sustain this rejection.
CONCLUSION
The rejection of claims 1, 4 and 7-13 as being unpatentable over Moriyama in
view of Okazaki is sustained.
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