Appeal No. 2005-1273 Page 4
Application No. 10/057,619
examiner is insufficient to establish a prima facie case of obviousness with respect to
the claims under appeal. Accordingly, we will not sustain the examiner's rejection of
claims 1 to 19 and 21 to 44 under 35 U.S.C. § 103. Our reasoning for this
determination follows.
In rejecting claims under 35 U.S.C. § 103, the examiner bears the initial burden
of presenting a prima facie case of obviousness. See In re Rijckaert, 9 F.3d 1531,
1532, 28 USPQ2d 1955, 1956 (Fed. Cir. 1993). A prima facie case of obviousness is
established by presenting evidence that would have led one of ordinary skill in the art to
combine the relevant teachings of the references to arrive at the claimed invention. See
In re Fine, 837 F.2d 1071, 1074, 5 USPQ2d 1596, 1598 (Fed. Cir. 1988) and In re
Lintner, 458 F.2d 1013, 1016, 173 USPQ 560, 562 (CCPA 1972).
In the rejection of the independent claims on appeal (i.e., claims 1, 19, 30 and
44), the examiner (answer, pp. 4-10) concluded that it would have been obvious for a
person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of the invention to have modified the Figure
10 embodiment of Yashima so as to position an unprinted print medium (e.g., a blank
sheet of paper) so that the first movable printhead assembly (head 31A of Yashima, see
Figure 10) and the second movable printhead assembly (head 31B of Yashima, see
Figure 10) deposit ink only on the first and the second portions respectively without
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