Appeal No. 2003-2032
Application 09/116,371
§ 103(a), the examiner must show that some objective teaching, suggestion or motivation in the
applied prior art taken as a whole and/or knowledge generally available to one of ordinary skill in
this art would have led that person to the claimed invention as a whole, including each and every
limitation of the claims arranged as required by the claims, without recourse to the teachings in
appellants’ disclosure. See generally, In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1358, 47 USPQ2d 1453,
1458 (Fed. Cir. 1998); Pro-Mold and Tool Co. v. Great Lakes Plastics, Inc., 75 F.3d 1568, 1573,
37 USPQ2d 1626, 1629-30 (Fed. Cir. 1996); In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260, 1265-66, 23 USPQ2d
1780, 1783-84 (Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444
(Fed. Cir. 1992); In re Laskowski, 871 F.2d 115, 10 USPQ2d 1397 (Fed. Cir. 1989); In re Fine,
837 F.2d 1071, 1074-76, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598-1600 (Fed. Cir. 1988). When appellants present
factual argument in response to the initial prima facie case established by the examiner, the
burden shifts back to the examiner to again establish the factual underpinning of a prima facie
case of obviousness under § 103(a) in order to maintain the ground of rejection. See, e.g.,
Oetiker, supra.
It is further well established that the language of a claim must be interpreted prior to
applying prior art thereto. In this respect, the language of the claim must be given the broadest
reasonable interpretation in light of the written description in appellants’ specification as it would
be interpreted by one of ordinary skill in this art. See, e.g., In re Thrift, 298 F.3d 1357, 1364,
63 USPQ2d 2002, 2006 (Fed. Cir. 2002); In re Morris, 127 F.3d 1048, 1054-55, 44 USPQ2d
1023, 1027 (Fed. Cir. 1997); In re Zletz, 893 F.2d 319, 321-22, 13 USPQ2d 1320, 1322 (Fed.
Cir. 1989). In doing so, all claim limitations must be given effect. See In re Angstadt, 537 F.2d
498, 501, 190 USPQ 214, 217 (CCPA 1976); In re Geerdes, 491 F.2d 1260, 1262-63, 180 USPQ
789, 791 (CCPA 1974); In re Wilder, 429 F.2d 447, 450, 166 USPQ 545, 548 (CCPA 1970).
We find it clear that the plain language of illustrative appealed claim 1 specifies a method
of manufacturing thermally bonded fabric comprising at least the steps of forming a web of
thermally bondable polypropylene fibers, passing said web over a heated calender roll having the
specified patterned surface which includes at least “lands” as recited, and thermally bonding the
fibers on the calender roll as specified such that fibers extending at least substantially in the
machine direction on the calender roll “will only have one bond point for adjacent rows of
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