Appeal No. 2005-2111 9
Application No. 09/827,454
Clearly, the artisan would have been discouraged, by Vasil’ev, to follow the path
taken by appellant, viz., to employ a broad area intra-cavity phase conjugator in a system
interested in correcting atmospheric phase aberration.
It cannot be obvious, within the meaning of 35 U.S.C. § 103, to do what the prior art
specifically teaches against doing. Accordingly, we will not sustain the rejection of claims
18, 19, and 21 under 35 U.S.C. §103.
Similarly, we also will not sustain the rejections of claims 1-17, 20, 22, 23, 40, 41,
and 45-49 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 because each of the rejections of these claims relies, at
least in part, on the combination of Akkapeddi and Vasil’ev. For the reasons supra, the
artisan would not have found it obvious to make this combination and the other references
(Pepper, Watanabe, Damen), applied in the various rejections, do not provide for the
deficiency of this combination.
We turn now to the rejection of claims 24 and 26-33 under 35 U.S.C. § 103 over
Watanabe, Vasil’ev and MacDonald.
The examiner’s position is that Watanabe discloses an optical interconnection
system in Figure 2, whereby a fiber optic device (fiber 2) is constructed to transmit an
interrogating beam to a predetermined intra-cavity phase conjugator 1. The examiner
indicates that while not disclosing a specific transmitter, it is clear that Watanabe uses a
transmitter for transmitting the beam.
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