Appeal No. 2005-1516
Application No. 09/182,645
Obviousness
Claims 46-49 stand rejected under 35 U.S.C. §103(a) over Wang, Ning, Tanuma
1 and 2 in further view of Kim and Wen.
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 when the teachings from the prior art would have suggested the claimed
subject matter to a person of ordinary skill in the art. In re Bell, 991 F.2d 781, 783, 26
USPQ2d 1529, 1531 (Fed. Cir. 1993). An obviousness analysis requires that the prior
art both suggest the claimed subject matter and provide a reasonable expectation of
success to one reasonably skilled in the art. In re Vaeck, 947 F.2d 488, 493, 20
USPQ2d 1438, 1442 (Fed. Cir. 1991). With this as background, we analyze the prior
art applied by the examiner in the rejection of the claims on appeal.
Wang, Ning and Tanuma 1 and 2 are discussed above. The examiner
essentially puts forth the same arguments with respect to the obviousness rejection of
the claims as were set forth concerning the anticipation of the claims by these
references. We find the deficiencies noted with respect to the references in the
anticipation context exist when the references are viewed with respect to the
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