Appeal No. 2005-0863 Page 4
Application No. 09/769,462
All the claims under appeal require a rotating continuous dewatering wire with a
plurality of zones having different wire permeabilities and a shoe press having both a
press nip length greater than about 80 mm and a pressure profile over the press nip
length of a maximum pressing pressure of less than or equal to about 2 Mpa. However,
these limitations are not suggested by the applied prior art. In that regard, neither
Schiel nor Bluhm would have made it obvious at the time the invention was made to a
person having ordinary skill in the art to have utilized a shoe press on Kamps' paper
sheet formed with a decorative pattern since such a shoe press would negatively impact
the decorative pattern desired by Kamps.
In our view, the only suggestion for modifying Kamps so as to arrive at the
claimed subject matter stems from hindsight knowledge derived from the appellants'
own disclosure. The use of such hindsight knowledge to support an obviousness
rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is, of course, impermissible. See, for example, W. L.
Gore and Assocs., Inc. v. Garlock, Inc., 721 F.2d 1540, 1553, 220 USPQ 303, 312-13
(Fed. Cir. 1983), cert. denied, 469 U.S. 851 (1984).
For the reasons set forth above, the decision of the examiner to reject claims 1 to
10 and 13 to 54 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 is reversed.
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