Appeal No. 2005-1980 Page 5
Application No. 10/373,385
claims 1 to 15 and 31 to 36 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 obviousness rejection of claims 1-6, 9-15, 31-36 as being unpatentable
over Lencoski in view of Waechter (answer, pp. 3-4), the examiner (1) set forth the
pertinent teachings of Lencoski; (2) ascertained2 that the feeding/fixing members 40, 41
of Lencoski are not laterally spaced apart fixing members as claimed; (3) set forth that
"Waechter shows the concept of having spaced apart feeding/fixing members 33 to
perform an operation during the feeding of a web;" and (4) concluded that it would have
2After the scope and content of the prior art are determined, the differences
between the prior art and the claims at issue are to be ascertained. Graham v. John
Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17-18, 148 USPQ 459, 467 (1966).
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