Appeal No. 2004-0356
Application 09/811,993
where the item can be found (col. 2, lines 9-11) and b) having
the advertising display apparatus and promotional material or
advertisement message carried thereby “dominate at the moment of
the customer’s purchase decision” (col. 3, lines 55-56).
As for appellant’s depictions on pages 14 and 15 of the
brief showing different attempted bodily incorporations of the
display device of Sernovitz wholly into, or attachment onto, the
display apparatus of Boggess, we note that the test for
obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference
may be bodily incorporated into the structure of the primary
reference, nor is it that the claimed invention must be expressly
suggested in any one or all of the references. Rather, the test
is what the combined teachings of the references would have
suggested to those of ordinary skill in the art at the time of
appellant’s invention. See, In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425, 208
USPQ 871, 881 (CCPA 1981). In the present case, given the common
goal in both Boggess and Sernovitz of attracting attention of
potential customers to a particular product carried on a store
shelf, and the self-evident advantage of lighting, particularly,
flashing lighting as in Sernovitz, to attract such customer
attention, we concur in the examiner’s position that the combined
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