Appeal No. 2005-1413
Application No. 09/935,983
The examiner bears the initial burden of establishing a
prima facie case of obviousness based on the disclosures of the
applied prior art references. See In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443,
1445, 24 USPQ2d 1443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992). In this appeal, we
determine that the examiner has not established that every
limitation in claim 5 on appeal has been disclosed or suggested
by the sole evidence of obviousness (Hendrickson). The burden
rests with the examiner to establish that the parts of the
injection molding machine of Hendrickson correspond to the
claimed parts of appellants’ injection molding machine, or the
claimed parts were suggested by Hendrickson, and we determine
that the examiner has not met this burden. As correctly argued
by appellants (Brief, page 8), Hendrickson only discloses a
generic mold base in which other mold inserts (mold blanks) may
be located, in order to vary production of a sized part from the
same mold base (see Figure 10; col. 1, ll. 45-59; and col. 5, ll.
64-66). Appellants disclose and claim a dual cavity injection
molding device where one cavity is provided for forming one
segment, such as the extending tab of a key fob, while the other
mold portion is designed for receiving a selected mold blank
(from a variety of such blanks) in order to vary the size or
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