Appeal No. 2004-2282 3
Application No. 09/989,555
Simply that there are differences between two references is insufficient to establish that
such references "teach away" from any combination thereof. See In re Beattie, 974
F.2d 1309, 1312-13, 24 USPQ2d 1040, 1042 (Fed. Cir. 1992). As we pointed out in our
earlier decision, we do not consider the differences between the primary references
Recchione and Finch and the secondary references Lacey, Dollman and Coultaus,
namely, that the primary references are directed to springless latch mechanisms which
are manually moved in both directions while the secondary references are directed to
spring-loaded latch mechanisms which are manually pulled to the open or unlocked
position against the bias of the spring and are moved to the locked position by a return
of the spring to its relaxed state, to be of such a nature as to discourage a person of
ordinary skill in the art from using a loop in a springless latch to provide a convenient
vehicle for applying a pulling force to the latch, as appellant has done.
As for appellant’s second argument (request, pages 9-10), that this panel has
substituted its hindsight opinion as to the obviousness of the invention, while
“obviousness cannot be established by combining the teachings of the prior art to
produce the claimed invention, absent some teaching or suggestion or incentive to do
so” (ACS Hosp. Sys., Inc. v. Montefiore Hosp., 732 F.2d 1572, 1577, 221 USPQ 929,
933 (Fed. Cir. 1984)), the motivation to modify the prior art “need not be expressly
stated in one or all of the references used to show obviousness” (Cable Electric
Products, Inc. v. Genmark, Inc., 770 F.2d 1015, 1025, 226 USPW 881, 886 (Fed. Cir.
1985); In re Bozek, 416 F.2d 1385, 1390, 163 USPQ 545, 549-50 (CCPA 1969)).
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