Appeal No. 2005-1485
Application No. 10/317,040
The claims on appeal stand rejected as follow:
1. Claims 1, 4, 21 and 24 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable
over the combined disclosures of Pollak and Nagasawa;
2. Claims 2, 3, 5, 12 through 15, 22, 23 and 25 through 29 under
35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over the combined disclosures
of Pollak, Nagasawa and Hazelrigg; and
3. Claim 30 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as unpatentable over the
combined disclosures of Pollak, Nagasawa and Gibson.
We have carefully reviewed the claims, specification and
applied prior art, including all of the arguments advanced by both
the examiner and the appellants in support of their respective
positions. This review has led us to conclude that the examiner’s
Section 103 rejections are not well founded. Accordingly, we will
not sustain the examiner’s Section 103 rejections for essentially
those reasons set forth in the Brief and the Reply Brief. We add
the following primarily for emphasis.
Under Section 103, to establish a prima facie case of
obviousness, “there must be some teaching, suggestion, or
motivation to combine the [prior art] references. [Citation
omitted].” In re Rouffet, 149 F.3d 1350, 1355, 47 USPQ2d 1453,
1456 (Fed. Cir. 1998). When determining the patentability of a
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