Appeal No. 2004-2238
Application No. 09/878,743
expected that a mold for a casket lid could have included a crown, a
pie, rim members, and a header and produce a unitary casket lid with
this structure. “For obviousness under § 103, all that is required is a
reasonable expectation of success.” In re O’Farrell, 853 F.2d 894, 904, 7
USPQ2d 1673, 1681 (Fed. Cir. 1988).
Appellants argue that the Examiner has not made findings
concerning the “identification of the relevant art, the level of ordinary skill
in the art, the nature of the problem to be solved or any other factual
findings that might serve to support a proper obviousness analysis.” (Brief,
p. 5).
We find that the references in this record are representative of the
level of ordinary skill in the art. See In re Oelrich, 579 F.2d 86, 91,
198 USPQ 210, 214 (CCPA 1978) (“the PTO usually must evaluate both the
scope and content of the prior art and the level of ordinary skill solely on
the cold words of the literature”); In re GPAC Inc., 57 F.3d 1573, 1579,
35 USPQ2d 1116, 1121 (Fed. Cir. 1995) (the Board did not err in adopting the
approach that the level of skill in the art was best determined by the
references of record); Okajima v. Bourdeau, 261 F.3d 1350, 1355,
-6-
Page: Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007